


The Waters and the Wild

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 15:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9188447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: An AU Pros story, set fairly loosely in the world of Speilberg's 2001 filmArtificial Intelligence.  It's the late twenty-second century, the world we know has been half-drowned. Bodie and Doyle are summoned from their respective professions to George Cowley's office, and assigned together to find out who is selling government secrets. Bodie must return to his past as a mercenary, and Doyle - no one told him Cowley was mad - Doyle is sent undercover as a love mecha.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heliophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliophile/gifts).



> This is an AU Pros story, set fairly loosely in the world of Steven Speilberg's 2001 film _Artificial Intelligence_. You don't need to have seen it for the story to make sense - its complete in itself - but if you have seen the film, or at least the international trailer, or clips or pictures on the interweb, you might have a sense of the surroundings and atmosphere that I was imagining, and just what love mechas like Gigolo Joe and Just Jane look like, for instance. 
> 
> For Heliophile, who was very patient!

_“Those were the years after the icecaps had melted because of the greenhouse gases, and the oceans had risen to drown so many cities along all the shorelines of the world - Amsterdam, Venice, New York, forever lost. Millions of people were displaced, climate became chaotic, hundreds of millions of people starved in poorer countries, elsewhere a high degree of prosperity survived where most governments in the developed world introduced legal sanctions to strictly license pregnancies - which was why robots, who were never hungry and did not consume resources beyond those of their first manufacture, were so essential and economically the chainmail of society._ ” - Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Speilberg)

o0o

Cowley’s office was high in the building, though not on the top floors, which were sealed from the world outside, shuttered and secured. This room had a long stretch of window - a real window, showing the real view: flashing, neon-lit darkness streaked at ground level with a thousand rushing car lights, and in the air above with the glowing flyers of the rich and privileged and the deep electric blue of police helis and ambulances. If Doyle looked to the west he could see the lingering glow of sunset on the horizon, to the east he could imagine the waters washing blackly along the shoreline of Old London, worlds away.

There were people still there, of course, because there were people everywhere, eking out a living in the old towers and skyscrapers, clinging on to what they were calling life, like ghosts of ghosts, their world long gone. It was no way to live, Doyle thought, every time he heard the Lifemechas called out to them again, alone with the ocean and the eternal fear that perhaps your tower would be the next one to fall, victim to the storms and surges, ever crumbling into the howl of winter wind and rain, or the squall of spring. And yet... sometimes, when his alarm was ringing yet again, when he was sent to yet another screaming domestic, or rogue mecha, or flesh fair riot, he wondered if maybe there was a simpler life somewhere out there. 

But if that was true, then why was he here? Why was he here at CI5 HQ, exactly where he’d always wanted to be? 

It was dark in the room, and quiet, save for the soft _burrrr_ of Cowley’s computer. The man himself seemed to wait patiently, although he tapped a single finger against the frame of the glasses he held in one hand. Another affectation, Doyle thought, shifting in his own seat; Cowley wasn’t that old, his eyes must have been lasered like anyone else’s. In all his life he’d only come across one person who couldn’t be lasered, and that was because she’d been mad as a hatter, clawing at her own eyeballs, terrified it meant they were turning her into some kind of mecha half breed. As if anyone would, or even could. Nasty case that, he remembered, turning again in his chair. Where the _bloody_ hell was...

The door opened behind him, and Cowley sat upright, put on his glasses, and frowned. 

“You’re late.”

“Sorry sir, trouble with the flyer!”

A flyer? Great, a jumped up boy racer who couldn’t even get to a meeting on time, and Doyle was going to have to work with him.

“Have your mechanics look at it, Bodie, I have more important things to do than wait for you!”

“Sorry, sir...”

Doyle didn’t grin, but he let the light of it play in his eyes as he looked this Bodie up and down. Short ex-army haircut, fashionable clothes, barely dampened glee on his face, despite having been dressed down within half a minute of meeting Cowley. Well, he couldn’t fault him for being excited, not when they’d been seconded by CI5. CI5 - the big A! You didn’t apply to join CI5, they found _you_ , and every cadet he’d known on the force had spent their duties hoping that one day they’d be noticed, one day they’d be summoned by their commander and...

And here he was.

“I’ve brought you both here partly on the recommendation of your superiors, and partly due to a certain amount of surveillance you’ve been under,” Cowley began. “As a result, your security ratings were approved yesterday.”

Surveillance? Doyle blinked, but apart from that kept his face still. 

“For something in particular?” the man beside him asked.

“Yes Bodie, for something in particular. I need two new faces, men with your skills and your contacts.”

“Undercover work?”

Cowley glanced at Doyle, nodded approvingly. “Aye, very particular undercover work. You’ll have separate roles, but will act as contact and back-up to each other. You will also both report back to me individually.”

“A long term assignment, sir?”

“You have somewhere you’d rather be, Bodie?”

“Me sir? No sir!”

Doyle glanced at him. Bodie was sitting comfortably in his chair, and yet something still shouted _parade rest_. Bloody toy soldier. Still, at least he should find it easy enough to obey orders.

“I’m glad to hear it. If I didn’t believe it you wouldn’t be here now.” Cowley stood abruptly, taking off his glasses and wandering to the windows, where he gazed thoughtfully outwards for a moment before turning back again. “As you know, CI5’s aegis is domestic security, but every now and then we are called upon to deal with something much more far reaching. This case could be one or it could be the other, and that is just one of the things that you will need to find out. You’ll have heard of Sir John Newbolt?”

Who hadn’t heard of the flamboyant and scandalous Newbolt? “The Minister for Overseas Intervention?”

“Just so. He appears recently to have somewhat confused his social and his political lives. Normally he would be disciplined by the House in the usual way, but unfortunately there are complications.”

“He’s got himself mixed up with someone he shouldn’t?” Doyle hazarded. “You want us to go in and find out how far it goes?”

“Partly. He is either guilty of a high level of corruption himself, or he is under attack from outside forces as yet unknown, forces with the kind of power that could seriously affect the stability of _our_ government.” Cowley returned to his seat, leaned forward to rest on his elbows, looking from Bodie to Doyle and back again. “Bodie, we’re expecting that certain of your mercenary contacts may be useful there.”

Doyle shot a sharp look at his new partner. A soldier _and_ a mercenary? No wonder he could afford the flyer. Bodie turned his head and met Doyle’s gaze, held it. His eyes, Doyle thought, inconsequentially, were very blue.

“Doyle, you will inveigle your life with the Minister’s, move with him in social circles, watch who he meets and listen very carefully to everything he says.”

“What?” How did Cowley expect him to manage that? “But...”

“You will be given a cover and impeccable references to help you accomplish this. You will also be... disguised quite heavily, so your constant attention to the role will be required. One of your strengths, so I’m told.”

“I don’t...”

“You will become the Minister’s latest love mecha, which will ensure your presence at the vast majority, if not all, of his social functions.”

 _He would become a love mecha?_ No one had told him that Cowley was mad.

Beside him, Bodie was openly grinning. 

“Why not just use a real mecha?” he asked, frowning in Bodie’s direction.

“A real mecha can be switched off, unable to record... _indiscretions_.”

“I’ll be _switched off_ fast enough when they realise I’m orga!”

“You’ll be wearing a Skin,” Cowley continued, as if he had never been interrupted. He was a smooth old bastard, if nothing else. “CI5 has access to some of the foremost minds in the country, and they have created the perfect simulacrum of a simulacrum. The underlying organics cannot be detected by any known scanner, and both optically and aurally... well, the illusion cannot be faulted. I’ll take you up to Mechtronics shortly for your fitting.

“What about Bodie, will he be wearing one of these... _Skins_ as well?”

“No, Bodie will be playing himself, as it were. Rumour has it that the Minister is involved in some shaky manoeuvrings on behalf of a country to the south - we’ll leave it unnamed for now - and that a certain soldier of fortune is raising a small but elite army that will act under the Minister’s command to both bring down the government of certain islands, and to establish its own particular brand of rule.”

Bodie’s attention was all on Cowley now. He raised an eyebrow. “Krivas?”

“Perhaps.” Cowley was giving away no secrets. “That’s what we need you to tell us. You’ve heard something?”

“Just rumours that he was back in the country. Could be his sort of deal.”

“Find out. And find his connection to the Minister!”

“Sir.”

“What’s our cover for meeting up?” Doyle asked, so that Bodie turned to look at him again. “There’s not much natural contact between a mercenary and a... oh.”

“Bodie will hire you for your professional services, that way you can spend as much or as little time together as necessary, and it will give you an opportunity for catching up on sleep. There are certain procedures for such meetings - you will meet in hotels that have not been arranged in advance, you will not meet in the same hotel twice in a row, and preferably not twice at all. Where possible, for Doyle’s... for health reasons specific to the Skin, you will spend the night together - your night in fact being the Minister’s day, of course.”

Of course... Whatever he’d been expecting from CI5, this wasn’t it. “With respect sir, taking on the role of a love mecha...”

“One of the reasons you were seconded for this assignment - you were _both_ seconded for this assignment - was your particularly high scores for libido. Are you telling me that you have moral objections to sex that would preclude your working for CI5, Doyle?”

Doyle took a breath. _Exactly where he’d always wanted to be..._ “No sir.”

“Good, good. Bodie - do you have any objections?”

“As long as I don’t have to follow through on the roleplay, no sir.”

_Follow through on the... _Doyle turned and glared at him, but Bodie was still watching Cowley, sitting casually in his chair now, hands linked over his stomach, one leg hooked over the other with ankle resting on knee. Yet Doyle could swear that he was tense, that...__

___Didn’t matter_ , he told himself, breathing deeply, _it didn’t matter_. If he survived this assignment then surely he’d be in, away from the casual corruption of the drug squad and the squalor of vice, away to a more certain black and white. Cowley had a reputation as a hard man, as someone who should never be crossed, who made his own rules - but he had a reputation for fairness too, for incorruptibility, and that, _that_ was what Doyle wanted. A simpler, clearer life, if not a gentler one._ _

__He wanted CI5, and so he wanted this._ _

____

o0o

In the end, Cowley’s phone rang before he could accompany them to Mechtronics, and he spoke into it impatiently before pulling a series of files from a desk drawer, and sending them away to find the boffins themselves. Bodie followed Doyle from the office, down a short hallway, and - ignoring the lift - up three flights of stairs to much longer hallways. At least the man moved like a love mecha, he thought, watching him take the steps three at a time. Strong thighs, a good arse - and he supposed you didn’t need too much more for a role like that. Christ only knew where Cowley had found him...

“DC Ray Doyle,” the man finally said when they reached the right floor for Mechtronics, stopping and turning, hand outstretched to shake Bodie’s.

“Bodie,” he replied, amused and not bothering to hide it. This bloke was a _copper_? A low-ranking, common or garden, street _piggie_?

“Just Bodie?”

“Just Bodie,” he confirmed. Buggered if he was going to pretend they’d ever be best friends. A _copper_... A discreet sign on the wall caught his eye. “Left here.”

Doyle frowned, looked as if he was going to speak again, but closed his mouth on the words and turned away instead. Much better, they’d get on like a house on fire if he could keep that up.

“Regular army then, is it?”

Or not. Bodie turned to glare at him. The jumped up little helmet actually sounded _contemptuous_. “SAS,” he said shortly, intending that it shut him up once and for all. At least he’d realise that he should do as he was told.

“Ah, the glory boys...”

Bodie breathed slowly, met his look with a calm smile. “That’s right, when it all gets a bit rough for you boys in blue, we’re the ones who bail you out.”

“Oh like the Embassy siege - how many dead was that?”

Fourteen, two of them children, and that cock up should never have been allowed, no matter how many civilians were rescued. Bloody mechas. If _he’d_ been in charge...

He’d barely opened his mouth to haul the little yoik down a peg or two when he found himself in front of a pair of opaque glass doors that announced they had reached “ _Mechtronics - all security passes required_ “. They seemed to glow softly from within, a peaceful pallidity that surely belied what went on inside. 

“This is it,” Doyle said, then waved a hand mock politely “After you.”

“No, no, this is your department sunshine - after _you_...”

“If you’d care to get a move on, perhaps we can get started?” Cowley’s voice from behind startled them both. He’d been silent as a cat - or perhaps a snake - and at his sarcasm Doyle swiped his card for entry. Bodie followed, again, and there they were, surrounded by a sea of sterile white, by quietly moving figures, both real and mecha, and by the hum of concentrated electricity.

“Mr Cowley - we’re ready for you in D12 sir, if you’d like to step this way?”

Corridors and cubicles, and always that endless background buzz that set Bodie’s teeth on edge. He supposed he needed to see Doyle in the Skin, but he could have done without the rest.

“Ah, Patricks - good morning.”

“Good morning, sir.” One of the boffins tore himself away from a bizarre tangle of circuitry and wiring that hung from a hook in the centre of the room, looked them both over once and then turned to Doyle. “There are a number of things you’ll need to know about the Skin. The first is that it is bullet and laser proof, and that if hit by either a recall will be activated that will immediately bring CI5 backup in the guise of Mechtronic Repair Agents. The second...”

“You’re expecting direct attack?” Bodie saw that Doyle wasn’t going to say anything, turned to Cowley. Soirees and sex might not be the cushy end of the assignment after all.

“We always expect attack,” Cowley said brusquely, “Of course we expect our agents to be protected - and to protect each other - at all times. But this is merely a precaution. Please continue, Doctor.”

“The second thing is that the bonding is so good that you _must_ completely remove the Skin for at least an hour a day, preferably longer - which is where your partner comes in.”

“Bonding?” Doyle asked, with a sideways glance at Patricks.

“The Skin is made of a substance that bonds on two levels with your own dermis. The first is for fit - there are no external indications that you are clothed at all - the second is a side effect of that fit, and must be controlled for at any cost. Well...” Patricks seemed to consider what he’d just said, “... at almost any cost.” 

“So if the cost is exposure as a fake or...”

“There are emergency measures you can take yourself, but they may cause damage to the Skin, and therefore risk your position. It is better by far to ensure that you meet with your contact at least once in every twenty four hours - and I understand that this has been accounted for within your time budget.”

There were rarely _time budgets_ in undercover work, surely anyone who worked in security had to understand that? Bodie opened his mouth to say as much, but Patricks was reaching for the wires and circuits he’d been fussing with when they came in.

“Mr Doyle, if you would care to undress?”

 _Here?_ But Doyle was already stripping, no qualms at all, in front of the boffin, Cowley, everyone. No wonder they’d picked him for the love mecha role, he obviously had no pride at all. Probably hung out on the Pleasure Beaches, flaunting himself. Bodie let his eyes drift casually down Doyle’s body as it was exposed. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, good arse, just as he’d thought. He still moved smoothly, even bared to their view like this, limbs flowing, body twisting easily when Patricks requested his attention. Bending...

And his cock was bigger than Bodie’d expected.

Well naturally he noticed, could hardly not with Doyle waving it all round the place. Patricks had handed him the Skin, which looked like nothing more than a body suit, flexible electronics sandwiched between two transparent layers, and Doyle hitched himself onto the central bench and slid himself into either leg, gently pulling the Skin upwards.

“It won’t tear through normal handling - it’s very durable,” Patricks was reassuring him, alternately scrunching and tugging at the fabric of one arm until Doyle took it from him with a grimace.

Where he was already wearing the Skin, from the feet up, it appeared to crackle for a moment, and then it tightened to impossibility, and the circuitry faded from view. Bodie’s eyes widened as he watched it encase Doyle’s entire body, disappearing between his buttocks, somehow stretching over his balls and even his cock and...

Patricks caught him staring. “The Skin does not bond with mucous membranes, it rather dissolves on continuous contact, allowing the body to... carry out its normal functionality. As most sex simulators are designed to mimic the human body for best... um... _utility_ , this will appear entirely normal. 

“Gosh, thanks,” Doyle muttered, flexing and twitching within the Skin. He held up the final flap of circuitry. “And this?”

“Just smooths over your face,” Patricks said. “It might seem alarming, but it’s perfectly safe, I promise you. It will dissolve around your eyes, nostrils, mouth and ears within seconds, and the next time you wear it will automatically adjust to the best fit where the bonding has previously been made. It _doesn’t_ reach over your head - just to your hairline - and that is your one place of human vulnerability while wearing the Skin.” 

“Right...” Doyle took a deep breath, and began to smooth the Skin up his throat, and onto his face. Bodie found himself wincing sympathetically. Couldn’t be nice, that, not at all... There was a small gasp of air as the Skin dissolved around Doyle’s mouth, another, deeper breath, and then “There, how does it look?” 

It looked... _unnatural_ , Bodie thought. Doyle was still Doyle, his shape the same, his movements unrestricted, but he was a smooth, hairless, slightly too shiny Doyle. No longer quite real.

“How does it feel?” Patricks asked, eyeing him critically.

“It... tingles.”

“That’s the electricity I’m afraid, nothing we can do about that. The body produces its own, of course, and there’s a slight incompatibility. It won’t harm you, just... keep you on your toes.”

“Great...” Doyle fidgeted again, shrugging his shoulders, running his hands down his flanks and over his hips and buttocks. “How do I get it off?”

“In an emergency, you find the slight Skin tag that is left in the navel area and pull. As I said, this _will_ damage the Skin and restrict the fit, and should be used in the last resort. Normally,” Patricks beckoned Bodie closer, handed him a small white tube, “your partner will coat his fingers with this gel, then run them down your back in a smooth line. This will temporarily split and thus substantially loosen the Skin so that it can be removed. It won’t work without the gel, which is the de-bonding agent.”

“And it has to be his back?” Bodie asked, looking without enthusiasm at the colourless gel on his fingers.

“To best preserve the fit on reapplication, yes. The flexibility and yet smoothness of the human skin means that the de-bonding agent spreads most quickly from...”

Bodie stopped listening, took his own deep breath, and ran a finger down Doyle’s spine, over the warmth of the Skin, over a slight shiver of movement, down and down to the small of his back, to where, if he flattened his hand, if he continued the movement, he’d feel the curve and rise of... He snatched his hand away.

Bloody ridiculous job.

He watched instead as the Skin seemed to split, revealing Doyle himself underneath, loosening itself until he was able to wriggle out of it, to pull it from his face and become... human again.

“Bit rum, innit?” Doyle said finally, perhaps the biggest understatement Bodie’d ever heard.

“Unfortunately it’s a rum affair we’re trying to uncover,” Cowley spoke up from the corner of the room. Bodie had practically forgotten he was there with them. “Patricks, it looks like everything runs smoothly enough, so I’ll leave you to go through the process at least half a dozen times with them, give them any more information you feel they require, and then send them down to Personnel to access the detailed assignment specs if you please.”

He turned at the door. “I’ll expect to hear from you both through the coded channels you’re given, within the next twenty four hours. Good luck, gentlemen.”

The door closed.

“Right then - Doyle, if you could strip and Skin up again please. Mr Bodie, do you still have that gel?”

His fingers were still sticky with it, could still feel a warm tingle from baring Doyle’s skin. It was the electricity, he told himself, nodding at Patricks, hating that he was half hard and that his breath caught at the thought of touching Doyle again. 

It was just the electricity.

o0o

The Rains had started by the time they were released, instructions and directions committed firmly to memory, the Skin folded and tucked into his pocket, where it seemed to shock against his fingers whenever they touched it. He had just twelve hours in hand to turn his life into something else entirely. Doyle stopped to stare at the sky a moment, the downpour not yet begun, a fine misting of water against his face, getting cooler now that it was heading for winter. Barely pausing beside him, Bodie rolled his eyes and turned immediately away, strong stride taking him off somewhere into the City, so that Doyle changed his mind all over again about offering to buy him a drink. Supercilious bastard - tomorrow would be soon enough to see him again, way too soon.

Across the street the Tube sign flashed orange neon at him - his Tube - and he crossed hurriedly to catch it, jostling his way through the growing crowds, all bent on getting out of town and home for the weekend. He caught the lift just as the doors twitched inwards, pressing close to the suits and bags to squeeze himself in as they slammed shut and everything juddered into motion. There was a vague pull upwards, and then the doors shook open again, expelling them onto the platform where the Tube was waiting with its own impatience. He took a last glance down to street level, then up at the distant sweeps of flyer lights, and then he was swallowed again with the crowd, shoved inside and onto a thinly-cushioned seat, and then they were whizzing along the elevated tracks.

A simwindow showed the idealised version of their journey, and he watched it absently, comforted and disturbed by the familiar view. It had been over a year since he’d seen a sunset anything like the window was playing, and then it had heralded one of the worst storms of the winter - actual snow that coated the ground like fairytale icing sugar for two days, closed down the Tube and set the Media to speculating about a new Ice Age, frozen rivers and seas such as hadn’t been seen since the twentieth century. 

He sniffed, frowned. Bloody twentieth century - it was everywhere at the moment and showed no sign of going out of fashion. Come to think of it, Bodie’s gear had had that historical twist to it, his trousers some slight flare, a hint of collar to his neckline... Yeah, he’d be the type to keep up with all the latest trends alright, to worry about the length of his hair and the width of his sleeves... Mind you, he wasn’t bad looking, if you liked the type, he thought fairly, all dark mystery and muscle. Probably had every woman from here to - well, where ever he’d ever been as a merc, and that could have been anywhere...

Cowley recruited mercenaries to CI5? It didn’t seem right, somehow, didn’t sit with what he’d heard of the man... Bodie’d got into the SAS on top of it mind, so he must have twisted back the right way for some reason. Kept his contacts though. Interesting.

The Tube slowed, his stop flashing above the door, and he stood and swayed for the last few metres, took a deep breath of fresh - _ish_ \- air when it invaded the carriage as the door slid open, pulled up his hood and stepped out thankfully onto the platform. Once upon a time the Tube had actually run _underground_ , so his schoolteachers had said, a nightmare of a journey through a maze of tunnels that were still down there somewhere, under Old London, awash now of course, though no doubt some entrepreneurial amphibicopter company had their eye on it, would be offering overpriced historical tours. Doyle had enough to deal with in the here and now.

The Skin…

He didn’t like it, not one little bit, though apart from the vague tingling it was comfortable enough – almost too comfortable, in fact. Would it fool someone like the Minister? His security guards? Patricks had run him through half a dozen types of scanner to demonstrate just how undetectable the Skin was, but…

But nothing, he was just nervous.

Undercover as a mecha – he’d never heard of it being done before. Attempts at disguise that ran the other way, of course, mechas were always trying it on, covering up one malfunction or another that was just enough to send them Rogue and have them condemned, but never a human trying to pass as mecha. Why would you? And a love mecha at that… He’d seen enough of them in his time, and like most ordinary people he’d tried them out once or twice and enjoyed it, but they weren’t real, and they weren’t love. At the end of the day they were more worried about their operating tags.

Speaking of desperate - he ducked into Cho’s Takeaway, picked up the menu and scanned it quickly for anything new, then ordered his usual - should he try to call Abri? They’d rowed about his week off being cancelled last time he saw her - he had Cowley to thank for that, too. He watched the simwindow’s pattern of sunshine on leaves and water, listened to the wind starting to pick up outside. Was there any point when he’d only see her once and then have to travel _away on business_? Would she even believe him – she knew he was a copper, what kind of business did coppers ever go on?

The kind where you disguised yourself as a Love Mecha, he thought, with a twist of his lips upwards, prompting the girl behind the counter to smile shyly back at him. Nah, he’d stay in tonight, eat his Chinese and get ready for the next few weeks. Months. He’d need to shut up the flat, and he’d use the lottery cover-story with the neighbours since he didn’t know how long he’d be gone. A minor win, just enough for an extra-long holiday. _Only played twice, and my numbers came up!_ Would he give up his job if he won the lottery properly, head off on a yacht or one of those all-luxury sailing ships to see the world at his leisure, surrounded by the rich and the lazy? Nah – might be alright for a week or two, see what the other half get up to between their silk sheets, but he’d be bored solid when the curiousity’d worn off. Something more, he needed something more. Something where he felt like he was doing some good, making a difference. Something like CI5.

Which just brought him back to the job at hand. His food arrived, and he took it with a nod and a wave, stepped back into the misting rain. It picked up as he swung, long-strided, down the street, and he reached his flat just before it turned to hard, solid drops, swiping in to the sound of water on concrete, the smell of chilli and spices, and his last night of rest for god knew how long.

Right. Work to do.

He ignored the lift and walked, two steps at a time ever upward, to his small attic rooms. They were cold in the winter, and hot in the summer, but there were two real windows up there, that could be thrown open to views that looked south and east across the city to the sea, and sometimes, just sometimes when the tide was lower than usual, the red-brown shine of old London rooftops, long submerged.

He paused on the landing below his own, alerted suddenly to something else in the air, something artificial and sweet, and…

“Hello, Ray.”

“Abri…” He watched as she pushed herself gracefully up from the floor, long dark hair swinging across her shoulders, blue eyes bright and focussed on him.

“Mrs K let me in, I was expecting you hours ago! I’ve been thinking, and there’s more to life than work, isn’t there? I think you should come and meet Mum and Dad at last, so they’ve invited you to lunch on Saturday… is that Chinese you’ve got?”

Doyle smiled half-heartedly, kissed her waiting lips as quickly as he could, then took a deep breath and let her walk ahead of him into the flat.

o0o

“Hey, Bodie!”

Bodie closed his eyes a moment, then stretched his lips into a grin and turned around. “Hello, Sirri.”

“I’ve been waiting for you…” Sirri looked up at him through pale blue eyes and a fringe of white-blonde hair, still pretty, still playing the little-girl-lost card, though the novelty had worn off for him after their second date. She’d not been so lost when he was flat on his back and they were both naked, and that had kept him interested for a while, but…

 _But enough was enough_ , he thought impatiently, wanting to go home, to get away from the memory of Doyle’s skin under his hand, the strange _thrum_ through his body whenever they touched. “Everything alright?” he asked, and paused at the door to the _Millennium Dome_ , despite the thump of music already seeping into the street, and the crowd of bankers and wankers who were bound to be inside, already escaping their offices, not yet facing up to their partners and homes.

“Are you going in for a drink? You could buy me something fizzy and fun…”

“I’m off to the gym,” he broke in, with an apologetic smile, “Been cooped up with my boss all day.”

“If you’re feeling tense, dearling, we could…”

“Not tonight,” he said, “I’m off on business tomorrow, got to go and pack, make sure Mimi’s alright to water the dog and feed the plants.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and squeezed her hand, because she was a nice enough kid, and she’d been fun, but… Enough was enough. “I’ll see you when I see you, eh?”

He turned away, saw for the last time her full lips turning from coy smile to a moue of petulance when she didn’t get her own way - which had usually been _him_ , and not something he was going to complain about - and took a breath of cold, damp air. 

Maybe he should have gone home with her, screwed her beautiful body in any way she wanted, got rid of whatever it was coursing through his own flesh and bones. Or maybe he should go and find a bloke - it’d been a while, that’d be all it was, all he needed, the only reason he couldn’t get Doyle out of his head. Fuck _him_ instead. Someone fit, hard-muscled, hair curling around…

The gym it was then.

He stopped at his flat only long enough to grab a couple of cold sausages and a pitta from the fridge, as a sandwich to eat on the way, and to throw his kit into a bag. If he hurried he’d make it before the Rain got worse, and when he was done he could nip into _The Queen Elizabeth_ , remind a few of the regulars of his face, maybe have a game of darts or two. Tomorrow he’d need to go searching the pubs and clubs in earnest, grab hold of the few glimmers of a pulse he’d let fade into the background. Trust George bloody Cowley to want to reawaken things he’d hoped were dead and buried.

Back outside he glanced ruefully at the space his flyer usually occupied before striding past - Jen had better get it back to him undamaged, never mind _boyfriend emergency in the Highlands_ … He pulled his phone out and dialled her number, was genuinely pleased when she answered with a smile in her voice and someone else’s soft murmur in the background. She was even understanding when he said he’d need the flyer back by the end of the week, and it took him a minute after he hung up to re-conjure the feelings of indignation and bitterness he’d need to show around the old gang.

Not that they were fake. _Bloody George Cowley_ he thought again, as he passed his usual fitness centre, all gleaming lights and piped music, complimentary drinks and friendly instructors. It’d be all over the squad by now that he’d been dismissed, _and_ why, perfectly as per the CI5 cover story that’d been set up for him. Sordid goings on with prostitutes of dubious legality – nothing that could be too easily traced if one of his old mates decided to take it further, if Krivas or Brunner or Choi looked into what he’d been up to, but something for which the SAS would fire him on the spot. Couldn’t make them look bad in the eyes of the public after all, not if they were to keep their generous funding from the Ministry.

He understood the necessity, knew he’d be able to clear himself in the weeks – or months – to come, when this little operation was all over, was splashed around the newsblogs, but in the meantime it managed to rankle, just a little. If nothing else, Hokey’s Gym was smaller, smelled mostly of sweat and stale food from the café next door, and had very, very few _friendly_ instructors – at least not the kind he enjoyed being friendly _with_. Bloody mechas. Maybe he should have hung on to Sirri for one last night after all.

“Bodie – long time, no see!” 

“Prem – how’ve you been?” He dumped his bag on the floor, reached out to shake the other man’s hand, and took a look around. Same old place, even two years since he’d last seen it. A room full of spinners, running and weight machines, a couple of boxing rings at the end, and the sound of splashes and hint of chlorine from the swimming pool behind the rather grubby tinted wall that ran the length of it all. A dozen or so men were using the equipment, most of them looked ready to break faces without stirring a hair. Most of them didn’t have hair – personal defence gear these days was designed against it - and Bodie counted who was most recently active, or wanted to be, by the shine of their pate. At least he didn’t have to go that far again for George Cowley.

“Decided righteous living wasn’t for you, eh?”

He looked away briefly, let his face cloud over. “No such thing as righteous living,” he said, “Just people averse to having a good time.”

“True enough… You around for a while this time? You want a monthly pass?”

Bodie took a weekly one, and swiped his card to pay, stamping his fingers for security and making sure to wipe the plate with the cloth left there for the more wary customers. Old-fashioned, but it generally worked. Then he took himself down to the changing room, locked everything away with a further swipe of his card, and determined to wipe Ray Doyle – and everything except the quickest way to get through all this – from both mind and body.

o0o

The Minister’s parties were famous for their extravagances and outrageous behaviour. Doyle had read as much about them as anyone else, had on occasion followed them blow by blow when something more juicy had been leaked to the unreg news - and the court cases that followed, which usually banned the bloggers from the air, but also exposed even more lurid details. Newbolt never seemed to be effected, but then his family had credits and power.

This event looked like just that kind of gig, Doyle thought, as he stepped through the doorscanner and exposed his operating tag to the waiting mecha. He’d tried not to hold his breath, but that wouldn’t have lasted long in any case, confronted as he was by a naked mecha - _human?_ \- sculpture on the other side. A dozen figures intertwined in a variety of poses, and all of them attached in one... place or another, while golden water erupted from a florid central spout, gushing, trickling and flowing from skin to skin. 

“Don’t worry, dear boy, they’re all allowed to move once every half hour _on_ the half hour - and _my_ do they move. It’s positively inspiring...” A figure touched him lightly on the shoulder, breathed into his ear a moment, and then stood back, disconcerted. “You’re a mecha!”

Doyle turned to the man, smiled widely, and began to lean towards him, but with a grimace and a neat evasion, he slipped away. Not everyone here was as open-minded as the Minister then. Still, that was three times he’d passed as non-human, and he’d barely arrived ten minutes ago. The Skin was doing its job.

He helped himself to champagne from a passing tray, and wandered through to the main ballroom which was awash with light from a giant chandelier and its glittering satellites, all hanging from a ceiling so high that Doyle could barely make it out. A thousand thousand crystals reflected spinning rainbows against every wall and across costumes that were a myriad shades of white, worn by each guest at the Minister’s request. The only colour in the room seemed to be the tableaux in each corner - more naked figures: a scene from _Arabian Nights_ , another from _The Cyrillian Vortex_ , and two that seemed to be some sort of twist upon one or another Christmas story, even though it was barely the first of December. Or at least that wasn’t what Doyle had ever been told Santa would do if he was a very naughty boy.

The Minister was easy to spot, dressed as he was in a pure white top hat and tails, flourishing a gold-topped cane, and surrounded at a relatively subtle distance by half a dozen security men in less well-fitting white suits. He held court in a constantly moving train of people, whose false - or perhaps hysterical - laughter could be heard above every other buzz of conversation, clink of glass, spontaneous outburst of song in the room.

Drifting until he became a hanger-on of the Minister’s circle, Doyle waited until he felt the man’s eyes float across him, caught and held his gaze with as much languid, sultry appeal as he could manage, then turned and vanished into the crowd, moving easily through the throngs of people, thinking about how different it would be if he was a guest here, a real human guest. Would he be enjoying it, laughing at the lot of them, or would he be nudging his partner towards home as soon as they stepped through the front door?

Now and then he paused to speak to someone, man or woman it was all the same, as long as he’d seen them safely with a partner on one of his circuits of the room. He flirted, he touched, he tried not to look at what was happening in the tableaux as he passed them by, and most of all he tried not to listen, above the momentary near silence of the guests at each half hour, to the desperate splashing and gasping from the sculpture in the entrance hall. Definitely humans. How much had Newbolt paid them? Or maybe he hadn’t, maybe they were rain dodgers, homeless and grateful for anything that got them off the streets for a few hours.

They’d been cleaned up, of course, and all chosen for some kind of beauty. The tingling from the Skin had never quite receded, so that he seemed to be constantly half hard from the sensation on his cock, and even the gentle touch of his own white linen suit seemed magnified into friction, tight-fitted as it was. He’d get used to it, he had to get used to it, but it would have been nice to more time to do so before being sent into one of the Minister’s debaucheries.

The night wore on and the brilliance of the chandeliers dimmed until the light was butterfly soft and shadowed, the hum of voices drowsy and drunken as insects on a summer’s day. Doyle flitted past the Minister when he could, drank a little too much champagne but not nearly enough, and managed to give the impression on several occasions, of disappearing off with some young lovely. Finally, just when he’d thought it would never happen and he’d have to try again the next night, be more blatant, firm hands grasped his arms from behind, steered him towards a corner beside the _North Pole_ tableau.

“I’d like to see you make use of the _North Pole_ with them,” the Minister’s voice said softly in his ear, his hands moving to rub up and down Doyle’s chest. “I’ve been watching you, mecha - you move like a dream.”

“I am a dream,” Doyle answered automatically, feeling a hundred kinds of fool, wishing the tingling would stop, wishing he could close his eyes against the play being enacted in front of them, that he could go home and wash this night away. “I could be your dream. My name is Ray...”

“What do you say, Ray?”

“I say yes. I always say yes. Would you like me to suck you off while you use the North Pole? In front of all these people? Or would you rather use me?” He lowered his voice to a whisper, closed his eyes. “I like to be used by a big, powerful...”

The Minister groaned into his ear, and Doyle felt his nipples pinched, felt a hardness thrust once, twice, three times against his arse, and then a wetness soaking through his trousers between his thighs. _The man had exposed himself to do this, he thought, he’s a government minister and he’d all but had sex with Doyle in the shadows of a very public ballroom..._ He couldn’t be guilty of anything - he was a sex-addicted madman, plain and everyone already knew it. 

“I’ll take a D and D on you,” the Minister said, biting Doyle’s ear sharply enough through the Skin that it was all he could do not to wince, “Tomorrow night, come to my home address at midnight.” He flicked his mobile across Doyle’s operating tag, keyed in the numbers, and reached around to find Doyle’s own cock, hot and hard from the Skin and t he evening, and gave it a squeeze. “Keep that up for me.”

And then he was gone. 

In front of him the tableau continued to make unorthodox use of an igloo and somewhere in the distance Doyle heard the splashing start again.

o0o

If there was a god at all, Raymond Doyle would also be in hell tonight, Bodie thought from the depths of his third watered down pint. _The Lasersight_ might have changed its name and its allegiance to follow the current fad for the twentieth century, but _The King and Bullion_ was still the same dump it had ever been. The seats were hard, the tables filthy and covered with scratched messages, and there was the eternal tang of aggression in the air, of slights intended and imagined, and then settled out back at the end of a knife or a taser or a gun.

“Still can’t believe you went back there,” Silva shook his head, “Not with Ho Fat living it up with his boys.”

“Living it too high, wasn’t he?” Bodie said lazily, “Couldn’t see what was in front of him...”

“Yeah, but his entire stock of twelve-thirty-ones?”

“Had to be all of them, Marty was very insistent.”

“Would have liked to see his face...”

Bodie rolled his eyes. “He’s all talk, up there on this throne. Wouldn’t know a bad deal if it kicked him.”

“Yeah, but he put down the Lloyd brothers when they tried it, didn’t he. You remember..?”

Bodie shot Silva a cynical glance and drained his glass. Politics. Used to be he’d cared - there was a bit of him that still did, had to be or he wouldn’t be joining up with Cowley’s lot for all the money and excitement in the world - but no matter what this lot thought, they had no idea of the intricacies of couping the Island Nations, let alone any of the bigger States of Africa. 

Unfortunately the odds were high that they _had_ heard something about Krivas and his latest movements, or at least a whisper about where the money was likely to be this season, and so Bodie’d let it be known he was up for a ship out of port if the job was right, and he sat and he drank and he listened.

“Oy, Evan - your round mate!” he said, shoving his glass across the table. Evan shrugged philosophically and gestured for one of the servemechas. He tapped in his order and then, with a twist of his fingers and a flourish to catch everyone’s attention, he passed his wrist across the card reader. The mecha obediently began to serve drinks, and Evan grinned around the table.

“That’s a bit _mecha_ , innit?” Davey asked, voicing what Bodie had been half-thinking. Of course it wasn’t the same, and people’d been talking about bank implants for a long time, but it was the first time he’d seen one - and in this dive, for fuck’s sake.

“Where’d you take the jump for that, then?” Silva grabbed Evan’s hand and pushed his sleeve up to reveal what was now nothing more than a small white scar.

“It’s the way of the future, my man,” Evan grinned, “Keep your credits close...”

“They’ll figure out some way to whack that off without losing the credits,” Bodie said dryly, “And then there’ll be an awful lot of one armed bandits in this town...”

“Ha ha,” Evan grimaced at him, “If you’re gonna run with the rich like I do, you gotta play like the rich...”

He was interrupted by a predictable chorus of laughs and jeers for that one, Bodie joining in without any problem at all. _Money wired to your veins_ , he thought grimly, they were getting further and further from humanity all the time, ever-closer to the world of mecha. How long would it take before they were all lost, before there was nothing left?

The night wore on, through five pints, six, seven, and they talked of implants, and bank accounts, and who had lost how much, and politics and profit over and again. This country was unstable, that country was unstable - they rose, they fell, their people starved and turned on each other, and once upon a time Bodie had grown rich from the inevitability of it all. He’d been young when he set out, young enough to know everything and nothing, and there were days like today when he envied that young self.

“...took five of ‘em to hold him down in the end, but he was a sailor when we were done!”

And other times when he wanted nothing more than to have been born twenty eight years old and fully grown. “Right,” he lifted the shot glass Silva had given him last round, swallowed the burning whisky with a salute to them all, “I’m off to find something softer and prettier than you lot. I’ll see you round.”

Deep in reminiscences and their haze of alcohol, they shouted him off with a series of curses and advice on exactly what to do and how, and Bodie escaped through the thinning crowd with relief, avoiding a bloke with a grudge and frowning away a hopeful youth with a knife.

Outside the city was three a.m. quiet, the daily roar of cars and flyers no more than an occasional rush of sound now, clubs and revellers died down to muted music and low laughter from doorways. Bodie paused, took a breath of cold, moist air. Patches of fog drifted by just overhead, and he thought he could taste the salt of it. The street was still electric-lit with signs that offered anything a man could want. 

It wasn’t exactly Rouge City, but why go all that way when you could find almost anything you needed right here in town? There were still a few hours before he was due to meet Doyle, and a wealth of pubs and clubs surrounding him. He took a deep breath, shoved his hands in his pockets, and set off into the night, towards streets where the lighting was sympathetically low and the gardens artfully planted, where he could walk and think in peace.

To where Sarah, with a little luck, would be waiting for him.

o0o

By the time Doyle reached _Club Tropic_ , he was tired, out of sorts, and in no mood for Bodie’s dark glares and silence. He ordered a drink from one of the mechas - an orange juice short, cold and freshly squeezed to wash away the sickly taste of champagne - drank it down in a single gulp, the way some mechas did if they were trying to fit in with humans, and made his way to the corner where Bodie stood, apparently oblivious to the speculative and lustful looks he drew, somehow aloof even in this crowd.

“So you’re a mecha poof?” Bodie greeted him as they eyed each other warily, smoke and shadows half-hiding them even from each other, lights strobing red and green and silver for Christmas, so that Doyle felt mildly claustrophobic. Advertisements played across the roof, garish and distracting, and every now and then one of the floor mechas tried to catch his eye to sell him something.

To take his mind off it, he smiled dangerously, seductively, and stepped closer, hooking his arms over Bodie’s shoulders and running his hands through the shortness of his dark hair. “I’m the best lovermech you’ll ever meet,” he said loudly, “The things I could do to you...” He leaned in still further, turned his head and exhaled slowly across an exposed ear. “Get your mind out of the twentieth century, _Bodie_ , you lost that war a long time ago, and we’re everywhere now. Get used to it...”

Bodie reached up and wrapped his hands around Doyle’s arms, tightening his hold to the point of pain. Doyle wondered vaguely if the Skin would protect him from bruising as well as bullets. He refused to flinch, worked harder at keeping a smile on his face. “I’ve a D and D on a room just down the road, sir,” he said, “If you’d care to follow me...”

Bodie released him, and Doyle turned and led the way back through the crowds, up the staircase and out into the early morning air. The darkness still glowed with neon and electricity, but there was a different buzz about it now, a going-to-work buzz where the passers-by wore suits and looked at them disdainfully as they emerged, and the sky to the east was glowing with a grey winter dawn.

The hotel Doyle had chosen was unassuming, not too proud to rent rooms by the hour, and kept scrupulously clean by a small woman with pale hair and sharp blue eyes. She scanned Doyle’s D and D, checked his operating tag, and sniffed at Bodie who stared straight through her. Doyle grinned at her, received a similar sniff, and, ignoring the lift, led them upstairs.

Their room was six flights up, a small corner double with a tiny barred window in the bathroom overlooking a sheer drop to the ground, and two simwindows of sunshine through the leaves and branches of trees, snatches of blue skies beyond. Doyle muted it to sunset, turned to see what Bodie was doing, and started to strip. He wanted out of these stupid clothes, out of the Skin, and under a shower _now_.

Bodie was staring around the room, although he stopped and watched Doyle with a frown when he saw what he was doing.

Doyle frowned back. “Don’t get your hopes up, Butch, I’m knackered and I’m choosy.”

Bodie twisted his lips sardonically, and just for a moment Doyle thought he might actually be amused. “Get over yourself, Doyle, you’re the one who ordered a double bed.”

“You’ve just brought a lovermech to a hotel room,” Doyle pointed out, “Do you really think asking for a double was over the top?”

Bodie shrugged. “Did you see the Minister?”

“Yeah. He’s an idiot.”

“If he’s an idiot he’ll trip himself up sooner,” Bodie said briefly, finally taking off his own jacket, and heeling off his shoes. “No secrets divulged, I take it?”

“Give me a chance - I only just met the man!”

“ _I’m the best lovermech_...” Bodie mimicked, so that Doyle wanted to hit him. 

“Some of us use a little finesse in our work. Have a good night with your mates, did you?” _Sitting around a table enjoying yourself while I was out in the middle of it?_

Bodie snorted. “That lot? Give me some credit... They know Krivas is hiring, but not what for or where. They know more at _The Barrister_ but they’re more suspicious too. Takes time.”

“Yeah...” That was the job. “Give us a hand, will you?”

Bodie reached into his pocket, brought out the tube of gel, and moved towards him. Doyle turned around, trying not to be bothered by the fact that he was still half hard, the Skin tight and tingling, and a moment later he felt fingers on his skin, felt them sliding down his back, cool and impersonal and... freeing. 

God it felt good. Good to get out of the Skin.

“Thanks,” he said, turning for the shower, “Bloody thing itches. Be glad to get this job over with.”

When he emerged from the bathroom, finally feeling clean again, Bodie had turned the Windows all the way down to night, and was already in bed.

Not asleep though, he couldn’t be asleep yet. 

“You’re not from around here, then?” he asked, wanting suddenly to make some kind of overture to the man he was partnered with on this job, to someone who must, somewhere, have a little human decency. After all, he’d been seconded to CI5, just as Doyle had, so he couldn’t be all bad. 

“Aren’t I?” Bodie sounded bored, sleepy, he obviously didn’t want to make the same effort.

“Not with that accent.” Doyle was good with accents, he could tell Bodie wasn’t from Town any more than he was. “Up north?”

Bodie just grunted, and that, Doyle thought, was that.

Then: “‘Pool Island.”

That made sense. If you were from the Island you either ran away to sea or rotted where you were.

“Yeah?” he asked, carefully.

“Yeah, now is there any chance of letting me get some sleep?”

Doyle closed his eyes, lay in the dark too wound up to sleep and with Bodie’s warmth beside him, and thought about Liverpool Island, about mercenaries, and soldiers and the kind of men that Cowley recruited, and the operation they were on. _Two mysteries_ , his ticking brain told him, _two mysteries to solve…_

o0o

Bodie awoke, feeling strangely rested, just after noon, slid quietly out of bed and stretched. Doyle was still asleep, turned to one side and tucked neatly into himself and the pillows, so that all Bodie could see was a stretch of broad shoulders, strangely graceful neck and dark brown, riotous curls. The Skin was folded into a neat bundle and placed on the bedside table beside his mobile, both in easy reach. If Doyle was smart, he’d have tricked out his phone to act as a taser since he couldn’t carry a gun, but you never knew with coppers - he’d met too many who said they didn’t need a weapon to do their job and Doyle had that bleeding heart feel about him. At least the Skin was bulletproof.

He took a shower - didn’t bother shaving, all the better to play the part of bitter, twisted, and dissolute - and then wandered out to find breakfast, leaving Doyle behind him with one last look. Not as if he’d take a mecha out to eat, was it? 

Outside the air was fresh but misty, and they were close enough to the shore that he could hear seagulls - somewhere by West Hill he thought, and turned instinctively in the other direction, away from the water and up towards New City. He was damp within five minutes but far enough away from town that the first cafe he passed had tables free, so he ducked inside, ordered tea and a full English, and settled down with his mobile to check the news. 

Storm Alert for tomorrow, just in time for the Mullah’s visit - at least he wasn’t on security for that - yet another football scandal, and the government was going to crack down on piracy out of the Bristol Towers. He’d believe that when he could fly from Birmingham down the Channel to Bath without having to shoot holes in one of the buggers... 

And there it was - the Minister’s latest soiree, front and centre in the Society pages. There were pictures, and Bodie found he was stretching and scanning the faces not just for anyone of dubious background but also for Doyle. There were glimpses, none of them catching him fully, none of them centred on him of course, but in one he was the obvious focus of Newbolt’s attention as the Minister strode across the dance floor. At least he was doing his job, then.

Right - enough of bloody Doyle. The waiter brought his food over, and he caught his eye, smiled _thanks_ at him automatically and then had to pretend not to see the wink that came his way. He’d had a brief gossip with Sarah last night, and a lead on where Krivas was likely to be hiring, though not what for, and he needed to concentrate if he was going to convince the bastard that he’d forgotten about Xina, would rather hire on with him than kill him.

Now Xina - _Xina’_ d been beautiful, the kind of beauty that shone through some women from inside. Too beautiful - too trusting, and she’d refused to carry the knife he’d tried to press on her.

He shoved his plate aside suddenly, half-eaten, and stood, restless. It was overly-warm inside, and stuffy... He scanned his phone to pay before he left - the bank balance Cowley’d given him as cover wouldn’t stand the fine of a walk-out - and managed a tight smile at the waiter. Bloody Cowley... Bloody _Krivas_ , and Cowley needed to know his plans so he couldn’t just shoot him to pieces. Bloody Cowley.

It was better being outside, and since he couldn’t speed his demons away in the flyer, he took the Tube up to Barnet and booked a session with Sensai. Let it all wash over him, all the muck, _concentrate_...

First Sensai, then Krivas.

o0o

“What do you say, Ray?”

Doyle wanted to close his eyes, wanted to pretend that he wasn’t there, the Minister holding him roughly, one hand tangled through his hair, the other sharp-nailed, scratching up and down his back, lower, lower... But Newbolt didn’t like that, he liked his partner to watch, to acknowledge everything that was happening, to acknowledge and obey and so Doyle did.

“I say please,” Doyle said, and zoned out, operating on automatic. He listened for indiscretions, he watched for weaknesses, and he kept himself far, far away. It was, after all, his job.

So far Newbolt had let nothing slip, nothing more than a sly intelligence that made sure he took care of any overly-scandalous detail as it came up, that made sure Doyle was never in the room when he spoke to anyone else - at least not yet. He’d managed to keep Newbolt intrigued, managed to give him something new and slightly different every time they’d met - even, on the fourth luxurious occasion, to the point of walking away from him. 

Of course he was paying for that today – “ _No one likes a rogue Mecha, Ray..._ “ but it had ensured that there would be a today. The Minister, apparently, enjoyed things that were unpredictable - an edge of danger, of risk - and increasingly, of violence. Nothing too extreme so far, though it turned out he _did_ bruise under the Skin, but it could have been enough to get Newbolt noticed by the wrong people, by people who expected a return for what they discreetly offered a government official.

“Please teach me how to be a good Mecha, _sir_ ,” Newbolt corrected him, reaching for the riding crop that lay, starkly straight and dark against the soft, pale cloth of the bedspread. “Turn around and bend over.”

Doyle obeyed, gritting his teeth, and waited for the first blow to fall. The crop was drawn down his back, but this time it touched lightly here and then there, almost a caress, and then between his thighs, up and down, and… It was pushed into him, not far and not painfully, but to the accompaniment of Newbolt’s heavier breathing, and then pulled, slowly, out again. A pause.

Newbolt’s phone rang, suddenly loud and shrill in the thick air of the room, last week’s number-one ringtone hit, and Newbolt groaned, dropped the crop so that it slid to lie against Doyle’s knee, and stepped away from him. Doyle didn’t move, didn’t draw attention to himself, listened to the cryptic staccato of the conversation. 

“Yes? - Bloody Renton, he should know - Of course we do - No - Fine - Fine - Twenty minutes. Ah, Ray…”

Doyle turned to sit, leaning back on his hands, and looked up, an obedient mecha.

“The House has been called in, we’re going to have to postpone - such a shame, we can’t have you running around taunting me now, can we?”

“As if I’d do any such thing, to a…” Power, it was all about Newbolt’s power. “…to a government _Minister_. I wouldn’t dare…” But his eyes challenged, his body beckoned. He reclined a little further, safe now. It would take nearly all of that twenty minutes to reach Newminster. “I don’t have another free booking until…”

“Cancel anything you have on tomorrow after eight, I’ll have you then. Double fee for the _inconvenience_.”

“Booking period?”

Newbolt paused in the act of straightening the hood of his coat, slightly dishevelled but not so old that it didn’t make him attractive, dark hair ruffled, eyes still hazed with lust and flashing at the interruption to his plans. “Oh, I think this time I’ll take the full night – it’s a terrible thing to delay discipline you know, makes it so much harder to…” he reached into his trousers and took hold of his cock, “ _enforce_ things. Suck me.”

It didn’t take long - barely one of the twenty minutes – and then Newbolt wiped his cock around Doyle’s face, patted him on the head, and left.

Doyle was dressed in seconds and checking his mobile as he walked as quickly as he dared through the hotel in Newbolt’s wake. It took a state emergency for the House to start a session at this time of night, and there’d been nothing cooking, nothing that might… He flashed through result after result - sure enough, all was quiet in the world of politics. Newbolt was still standing by the kerb when Doyle swung out through the revolving doors, so that he slid sideways to the dubious shelter of a potted tree strung around with coloured fairy lights, stilled, waited. The streets were still busy in this fashionable part of town, and even Newbolt couldn’t control traffic. If he was lucky there’d be a taxi turn up straight after Newbolt’s car, and…

He wasn’t lucky, it was a flyer that swept past the other traffic to the side of the road, that slid open and took Newbolt within, and there was nothing he could do as it rose to hover for a moment, then turned abruptly and disappeared southwards.

Fuck.

He all but stamped his foot, struck backwards with a clenched fist to hit the brickwork of the hotel, the pain and sting satisfying, the punishment he deserved for being sloppy. He should have expected a flyer, should have known, should have had a contingency plan… He took a deep breath, reached up to rub hands over his face, to wake himself up a bit, remembered where he’d been barely five minutes before, and grimaced at that too. At least he had a name – he’d call it in to Cowley, find himself a room with a strong, hot shower and then see what he could look up for himself before Bodie showed up for the night.

Bodie.

o0o

The days slid past more slowly than Bodie would have liked, a tromp-plod of time spent looking up old contacts, drinking watered down pints and eating food he wouldn’t have fed to his cat. There were reasons, he remembered, why he’d been glad to get out of his old game and into the regular army, and those reasons were still grubbing about in the underworld, imagining that their tiny minds could get one over on this government, or that gang boss, or the other undercover copper, and boring him bloody silly in the process.

The only thing that kept him going was that he was getting gradually closer to Krivas, to the point that last night they’d been in the same pub, had crashed gazes before Bodie turned with a disdainfully lifted eyebrow, and left for the peace - if not quiet - of his hotel room with Doyle. He’d managed not to kill him yet - Krivas _or_ Doyle, he thought with a wry twist of his lips - but it was a close-run thing, and tonight was surely the night. No one else was active down south right now, so unless it was someone knew and unknown, it _had_ to be Krivas mucking about with the Southern Confederacies. Like him, too, to blackmail someone else into the dirty work. 

He checked his watch yet again - _hurry up and wait_ , this time for Harrison to turn up at his doorstep – took another calming mouthful of tea, and stared through the telly projecting on the wall opposite. Some mumbo jumbo about how mechas worked, but even that was better than the inane babble of _The Culture Club_ quiz show on the other side. Who cared about Bollywood and Presley and Elyas Peel, they were long gone… Just like Krivas would be from _The Sailors Arms_ if Harrison didn’t get a move on…

 _Could_ Krivas be blackmailing the Minister? Doyle didn’t seem to have turned up anything yet, other than an increasingly sour face when they met to de-Skin him, and a tendency to ask too many questions. Newbolt was sly enough, and too clever so far to speak out even in front of a mecha. There’d been no privacy switch turned, no indiscretions in the heat of – _hah_ – passion, and no chance for Doyle to do more than follow him further than the bathroom. So he said. 

The door buzzed behind him at last, and he grabbed his leather from the end of his bed, double-checked the tasers in his boots and sleeves, and took a swig from the glass he’d left out ready, splashing a little on his shirt, through his hair. 

“Jackie!” he shouted jovially, stepping out to join him and throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Thought you’d never get here! What kept you – that luscious girl you told me about?”

Harrison shrugged away from him. “You started early, didn’t you? Krivas isn’t gonna take you on if you’re trolleyed, man.”

“You let me worry about Krivas,” Bodie said expansively, pushing Harrison in the direction of the foyer. “Krivas an’ me are old old pals… He knows me…”

“He runs a tight outfit.”

“I know. Worked with him before – haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? We were in the Islands once, and this…”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me… Told every bugger who’d listen, didn’t you. Left here. Left here!”

Bodie turned left, leered happily after the two girls he’d almost walked into when they rounded the corner, and let Harrison pull him into the pub. It was loud – England was thrashing Canada in the World Cup again – and there was a strong smell of aftershave and sweat and spilled beer, but the match had brought them all together, the room full of roaring approval.

“Get ‘em in!” Harrison ordered, leaving him with a slap on his back, and Bodie turned to the bar, glad enough of one more moment to gather himself before facing Krivas. He could feel him, somewhere in the corner nearest the door, his gaze burning darkness between Bodie’s shoulderblades. _I’m going to nail you, he thought, after all these years you’re finally going to get what you deserve…_

He bought an extra drink, a large brandy double, and when he got to the table he passed Harrison his pint and then ignored him, sitting down next to Krivas, sliding the brandy across to him, then gazing around the place as if picking up where they’d left off just the day before.

“Not your sort of place, this.”

Krivas looked amused, shrugged. “It’s convenient. The bar is good.”

“Not bad,” Bodie agreed, looking approvingly at his own pint. “Better than the piss they’re serving down the Lasersight these days.”

“New hands on the till. They’ll learn. I hear you’re looking for work.”

Bodie nodded easily. “The Glory Boys pay more reliably, but they’ve not got a clue how to keep a man interested.”

“I hear you were kicked out.” 

Krivas was watching him, face sly and pleased. Bodie said nothing for a moment, then he shrugged. “Like I said, they’re a bit boring. Can’t let a bloke alone even in his spare time.”

“Missing the Game.” Krivas looked smug, “I always said you’d miss the Game, no matter what you said about that little slut.”

_Be the surface of the lake, the ripples caused by a thrown pebble are no more than ripples…_

“You should have left her alone.”

“Share and share alike, remember?”

 _The ripples pass away and even before they are gone the pebble is subsumed by the mud of the lake floor, harmless_ …

Bodie shrugged again, then turned and met his gaze. “All in the past now, isn’t it. I hear you’ve got something a bit more interesting than birds and bars going on.”

“Maybe. You know I had you checked out when I saw you the other day.”

He let his face tighten slightly, reached for his pint again as if to cover discomfort. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. You’ve picked up some useful contacts since I saw you last.”

“One or two.”

“But you’ve alienated half of them with your foolish behaviour.”

“What a man does…”

“Yes, yes, and with who - or should I say _what_? - is his own affair. The Bodie I knew seven years ago would have made sure he… _maximised_ such contacts.”

Bodie allowed himself a small smile - keep going, Krivas, keep going. “I might have done…”

“Good. I’m looking for an _in_ with the Russian Consortium - someone deep inside, someone who can tell us about their American connections and…”

Fuck.

Russia wasn’t “south”. America wasn’t “south”. 

It wasn’t Krivas.

 _Fuck_.

o0o

They met, as arranged, at _San Miguel’s_ , a shadowed and cheap restaurant which let rooms upstairs by the hour. Doyle confirmed his debit on demand and gestured Bodie ahead of him, not wanting him to see that he was moving carefully, that it had been anything other than an ordinary night as a love mecha. Newbolt had cancelled their eight o’clock appointment, and it had been nearly thirty six hours before he’d received a new D and D from him, but he’d taken up where he left off, every single inch of it.

“News?” Bodie asked, as soon as the door was closed behind them and they’d checked their scanners for surveillance. 

Doyle shook his head tiredly. “Renton came up blank - probably wasn’t his real name to start with. Newbolt’s been out of town for the weekend, I’ve been kicking my heels at his hang outs, but...”

“He didn’t take you with him?” Bodie lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “Fed up with you already, is he?”

Doyle felt his own flesh, tired and aching under the Skin, felt the sting where he’d been overstretched, pounded into, and the slight headache from Newbolt’s unrestrained cuffing when he’d forgotten to untie the man’s shoes before taking them off. “No,” he said, “He isn’t tired of me.”

There must have been something of it in his voice despite everything, because Bodie looked at him oddly for a moment. 

“Just get me out of this bloody thing, eh?” He moved to the window - the room only just large enough that he had to take a single step away from the bed - and turned down the real time daylight that was showing. It had been a long night, was well past ten now, and all he wanted was to sleep.

“Get your kit off, then,” Bodie said from behind him, and even his voice didn’t sound as harshly sardonic as usual. 

Doyle shrugged out of the leather jacket and the tight-fitting black jumpsuit he’d donned for the Minister. “You find out anything new about Krivas?”

“He’s got a deal going on with Veshenkin, but he’s looking north - reckons he’s had enough of the tropics.”

“So you’ve lost your lead?” Doyle breathed in as Bodie’s fingers slid down his back, they felt slow, comfortable.

“Nah, Krivas knows the business, he’s still our best source. Told him I wasn’t interested in regenerating the wastelands, I was looking to go south again - we’ll see.”

They pottered about their respective business, Bodie spending time on his mobile, tapping away to someone - if it was a girl, Cowley’d kill him. Doyle showered, cleaned the suit as he’d been shown, and collapsed into bed, not bothering to try and talk any more, to ask about anything else, not even feeling the lift of the bedsprings as Bodie got up and took his own turn in the bathroom.

When he woke again the room was still dark, and Bodie lay sleeping on his stomach beside him, face turned away. Nearly a week of this, and he still didn’t know any more about him... his mind ran in strange, half-awake circles, thinking restlessly of what he did know, unaccountably wondering about the rest. It didn’t matter - Cowley trusted him, so he could trust him, he didn’t need to know anything else.

But he wanted to. 

It was barely three in the afternoon, but no matter how he tried he couldn’t get back to sleep. He remembered Newbolt’s face, remembered being looked down on, and couldn’t imagine how he’d been able to just get on and do the job without punching the man’s lights out. He tried to piece together what he’d found out about Bodie from the odd answers he’d been given, but nothing matched, nothing made sense when he gazed through half-open eyes at the man asleep in his bed now. He might as well get up, go for a run...

Just as he thought it, Bodie stirred, then sat up as if he’d been awake for hours, stretched once and strode into the bathroom. He came out and got dressed unhurriedly, but straight away, and with just a glance at Doyle. 

Doyle turned onto his back, blinked once, and rolled to his own feet, got himself Skinned up, and pulled on the rest of his clothes. He was only just done when Bodie looked up from the phone he’d been tapping at again, nodded briefly to him, and then left.

Doyle waited only the length of time it took for him to finish dressing, then he dashed out the door and down the stairs, knowing Bodie would have waited for the lift as he did every other time he’d seen him. It was too early for him to be hooking up with his merc mates, surely - midnight owls the lot of them - so where was he off to? What did he do in all the time he was off on his own? Who was he?

Sure enough, he caught sight of Bodie turning the corner at the end of the road, jogged fast enough to catch up and make sure he wouldn’t lose him to another turning, and then followed as casually as he could. He half expected Bodie to hire a taxi, or even a flyer and vanish, but they kept walking, through crowded city streets and then out the other side to a more residential area, so that Doyle had to hang further back to avoid being seen.

It didn’t look like Bodie’s type of place, mind, so maybe he’d already been spotted, and was being taken on a wild goose chase. Houses here were set back from the street, surrounded by elegantly laid out gardens and lawns. There was something peaceful about it all - the comfort of knowing you had money, he assumed, of knowing you could afford a mecha to look after every little thing you might need, to protect you from the real world outside.

Bodie turned left into one of the driveways, and Doyle ducked behind a thick row of magnolia bushes, watched as he paused and looked behind him, looked carefully around to see who was watching. Did he know Doyle was there? Surely not... Whether he did or not, he walked the rest of the way to the front door, rang the bell, and after a brief pause vanished into the house.

Interesting... He hovered casually by the wall of greenery, took out his mobile and looked up the address. It was, as he’d expected, unlisted, nor did it come up in any of the usual news rags and search engines. The street looked quiet, most of the driveways empty of cars, though there was the occasional flyer sitting shining in the fading December daylight. He took a chance, wandered up the driveway of the house next door, and then clambered easily over the double metal fence separating it from Bodie’s mate’s place. Or...

He paused. Could Bodie live here? Was he simply breaking Cowley’s rule to pop _home_ every day? He had his own flyer, obviously wasn’t short of a penny or two... Nah, it didn’t match up - an ex-merc with a family and kids in a respectable part of New London? There was something going on. Could it be that Krivas was involved, and Bodie was covering for him? Bodie’d known him a long time ago, after all, maybe they’d been closer than he’d let on - maybe he felt he owed him something.

None of which was directly implied by Bodie visiting a house like this.

It was one of the old places, shored up and expensive these days, but the owner had left in some of the original features. The windows were real, and there was a length of guttering that ran along the side of the house, passed a first floor window with a wide sill and what looked like an old fashioned, accessible lock. There were shrubs and bushes all around too - lousy for security, helpful for him. He slipped away from the fence, plant by plant, began sidling around the walls of the house, looking for lit windows. 

There were two - and even better one dark window that had been left open, despite the winter chill. He considered. The Rains would start soon - if he wanted to get inside he’d have to do it now, before the owners went around checking.

Bodie was in there somewhere, the man he was supposed to be working alongside.

It turned out to be a kitchen window, and he negotiated an old-fashioned row of storage jars, a toaster and an electric kettle, finally jumped down onto a sleek white floor - retro linoleum, of course. He paused, listened, but there were no sounds beyond the ordinary noises of a house: the hum of electricity, the occasional gurgle of a pipe, a hushed flyer passing by outside. So where was he?

The downstairs - five massive rooms, surely a nightmare to heat - was completely deserted, so he tiptoed carefully upstairs, footsteps muffled by deep, soft carpeting, and paused again.

There were muffled voices, indistinct and irregular, behind the third door from the left; two men, one of them Bodie. The door was slightly ajar, and he stood listening for a moment, then his eyes widened and his breath caught. Carefully, as slowly as he could, he pushed the door until he could see through the gap. Bodie and his mate weren’t having a conversation - they were having sex.

He watched because he couldn’t not, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of Bodie’s buttocks, clenching and releasing as he thrust into the man in front of him, from the way Bodie’s hand moved rhythmically around the other man’s cock in the mirror behind the bed, the one that Bodie’s other hand leant against for support. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight of Bodie’s face, pale and long-lashed, his lips opening on a gasp as he came, as leaned down and kissed the other man’s neck until he too...

Doyle took a step back, not worrying that there might be anyone else in the house, not even thinking about being discovered.

Bodie was as straight as _he_ was. Bodie had sex with other men. Bodie, who shared his bed and called him names for bedding Newbolt.

He pursed his lips, clenching his fists against the bright glitter of anger, because there were better ways of dealing with this than bursting in and beating the pulp out of Bodie, and then he went back downstairs and let himself out of the house, into the rain.

o0o

Bodie hummed as he swung through the door of the _Hotel Jacques_ , smiled and scanned his phone past the girl mecha behind the desk. It had turned out to be a productive night, Sarah coming through with a new name, and Cowley had been pleased with his information. Surely it wouldn’t be much longer, and he’d be able to get back to something more than all this raking around in the muck. Doyle should be upstairs already, waiting, he could get to bed and maybe get a decent night’s kip for a change.

Doyle was indeed there before him, standing in just the Skin on the opposite side of the bed by the window, gazing into the distance as if it was real, as if he could see through the wall to the world outside. 

“Alright?” he said as he came in, even feeling at peace with the little policeman tonight. Even if Newbolt wasn’t bad on the eye, it couldn’t be much fun doing what Doyle was doing, hanging around politicians and sycophantic groupies all evening. He hadn’t looked right the other day either, though he seemed to be moving easily enough tonight as he turned around, raised his hands to his hips, and stared straight at Bodie. 

He didn’t answer though, just turned back pointedly, and waited for Bodie to de-Skin him. Bodie did, watching the area just above his finger as the material split open, revealed Doyle’s own flesh. There was a strange frisson, as there always was, to doing this, the electricity of the costume inveigling its way through his own body, a kind of shiver.

“Find out anything interesting?” he asked, because Doyle was unnaturally quiet, even his breath seemed shallow, controlled.

At last Doyle moved, lifted his head and looked at him again. “I found out something very interesting,” he said in a low voice, and something about it stopped Bodie, froze his good mood, made him wary. “D’you wanna know what it is?”

“Go on,” he said, as casually as he could. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?

Doyle peeled the Skin from his face, wriggled out of it until it hung like a wetsuit around his waist, tilted his head to one side. “I followed you home the other day.”

_What?_

“Who’s the other feller? You know, the one you’re fucking?”

“You did _what_?” Doyle had been trailing around after him, instead of getting on with his own job? _And he hadn’t noticed_...

“Cowley’s going to love that, you know - we’re supposed to be secure, undercover! We’re not supposed to have kept any ties to our homes, to where we live!”

“I don’t live with Sarah - I haven’t seen her for years!” he shouted before he could help himself. “She was a merc just starting out as I was leaving!”

“She?” Doyle raised an eyebrow, stood there as if he was the arbitrator of all that was good and right.

“That’s right - _she_. _She_ prefers it since _she_ got back from the jungle and took up with a bloke who bought her a house. You have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem with...”

“You know your problem?” Bodie cut him off, mid-sentence. “You can’t bear to think that maybe, _perhaps_ , someone just doesn’t fancy you!” And with that he snatched up his coat and strode out, slamming the door behind him and not caring what the neighbours might think. Jumped up little...

He half expected Doyle to come chasing after him, but of course he was half in, half out of the Skin - too dangerous that, to put it back on and wait until tomorrow night. He slowed down when he realised it, put his head back and breathed in the cold morning air, found he was on his way to Sarah’s again and let it happen. She wouldn’t mind, it was her day off and Monty was still out of town, so she’d be alone again. 

What had Doyle been playing at, anyway? Following him around town as if _he_ was under some kind of suspicion... Could he be? But why would Cowley hire him if... No, it was just the copper’s idea of a good time, nosing what he could out of everyone. He didn’t stop asking questions, probably thought he was being subtle about it...

“Bodie!” 

He pushed past Sarah as she opened the door, dressed in her best twentieth century, jeans and a cropped top, white boots, some blue muck around her eyes. He stormed as far as the end of the corridor, turned around and walked back to face her.

“You look like you could use a drink,” was all she said, after staring at him for a moment. “Come and tell Aunt Sally all about it. Or no, let me guess...” She led him back through to the high-ceilinged living room, wandered over to a collection of bottles on a silver tray, poured him a glass of brandy. “...it’s your policeman again?”

 _His_ policeman!

“The one thing he is not is _my_ policeman...”

“Oh come on, you’ve done nothing but talk about him every time I’ve seen you this week. What’s he done now?”

He spent a good ten minutes telling her, knowing that she was letting him talk himself out of a rage, not able to help himself anyway. “...so if you think I want to be anywhere _near_ him you can think again!”

“You know, I’ve heard things about Newbolt,” Sarah said at last. “He hung with a pretty edgy S&M crowd for a while, until there was some scandal in the newsrags and he had to leave it alone - at least publically.”

He vaguely remembered the stories, sensational and exaggerated he’d presumed at the time, had almost felt some sympathy for the bloke. “You think he’s still...?”

Sarah nodded. “I think his tastes moved on, but... put it this way, I wouldn’t have him back here for the night.”

Through his quietening anger, he thought back again to the look on Doyle’s face the other day. “Rough, is he?”

“They say there’s a reason he takes home more mechas than real people, and he’s no member of the Liberation League...”

Bodie pursed his lips, wandered over and poured himself another brandy. It was still no excuse for...

“So he followed you,” Sarah said thoughtfully, “And he must have been inside if he knows that we...” She left off delicately. “And you didn’t spot him, did you?”

He didn’t deny it - couldn’t.

“Sounds like there’s more to him than you thought, eh Bodie? Now I wonder why that might bother you...”

“Look, he just likes to think...”

She waved a hand at him. “Save it, dearling. Now, do you want to go upstairs, or not?”

Bodie shook his head. He didn’t want sex, even Sarah’s straight-forward kind of relief, couldn’t be bothered with any of it right now. But what did he want?

“Tell me more about Newbolt,” he said, and settled in to listen.

o0o

Despite having a bed to himself for the day, Doyle didn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, tried to ignore the stinging ache around his wrists and ankles where Newbolt had tightened the restraints bare hours ago, the bruises across his back where the riding crop had fallen hard on the Skin. His mind raced: Bodie, Newbolt, the case… There had to be some way in, some way of breaking through Newbolt’s barriers, or of tracing Renton, or…

But his thoughts kept coming back to Bodie.

Why would he lie about the company he was keeping - just, why bother? No one cared who you slept with as long as you didn’t break the law and get some woman pregnant. Bodie should feel _safer_ sleeping with blokes... Who was this Sarah, anyway? Someone who’d been out fighting with him, a mercenary. Well if she was accepting houses from the blokes she slept with, she was mercenary enough.

Right. He threw back the covers, stood up straight and stretched, tried to ignore his pounding head. No point lying around, he’d get himself down to the Registry, look up Sarah’s place the old fashioned way, see what he could track down. 

He showered first, the warm water a comfort, almost sending him to sleep after all, and then he dressed, tucked the Skin into a jacket pocket, and slid carefully past reception without being seen and into the morning air. 

It was a chill morning, though the rainclouds looked high and unlikely to break early, and he’d just caught the late morning rush to work, jostling along with the respectable men and women of town, so that somehow he felt more human. Cowley’d set him up with a Cubicle, as many love mechas rented for their clothes, spare parts and a recharge plug, and he pulled his hood more tightly to him, tapped in the code, and stepped inside. There was just space to change into something fresh from his shelf, something more casual than the clothes he’d been wearing for Newbolt, something else to remind him that he was as orga as anyone else. 

Just for today he’d be himself again, just for today and before he had to present himself once more for Newbolt. He’d half a mind to go back to Cowley and tell him what he could do with his Skin - he’d got nothing more from it so far than an unrecognised name, bruises and a strong aversion to Newbolt’s politics.

He wouldn’t though, he knew he wouldn’t. The idea of being returned to the Met, of watching people like Preston and Montgomery being promoted above him with their corruption and bile... At least those two wouldn’t be at it again, for all the dozens of others who would. No, he needed CI5 now as much as he wanted it, and that meant he was going to crack this case if he had to bow and scrape, and blow Newbolt a dozen times a day.

They knew him down at the Registry from days upon plodding days of checking  
through the old records and building histories that remained unscanned, usually after he’d pissed off one superior or another, but he slid his ID from its hiding place into his jacket pocket anyway. His gun and taser he left concealed, though he couldn’t help sending them a wistful backwards look. It was one thing going undercover with the protection, at least, of the Skin, going out into the world on a job with nothing that would shoot back never felt right.

He stopped for breakfast in a City cafe chain he’d never normally have frequented, all subtle lighting and business suits trying to look efficient and yet coolly relaxed - not the sort of place his own colleagues would hang out. Out of habit - and a kind of relief - he flirted with the girl making the coffee, let her send him her phone number and saved it to his socials, then he went and sat down in a corner beside a real window, alternated checking the news with gazing out at the morning.

The House was sitting today, so Newbolt would be busy there - but one of his Committee meetings had been cancelled, which meant there was probably no getting out of their appointment that night. He toyed with the idea of postponing himself - for maintenance, perhaps - but he’d played that trick before, and it had got him what he wanted then - Newbolt’s attention and a kind of devotion. 

On a sudden thought, he searched images of Newbolt until he found one where he was in the company of a mecha, zoomed to the mecha’s operating licence, and then searched for the model. It was Just Jane, from AutoToys, she was still active, and she had a vacancy that afternoon. He took the debit on demand, repeated the search and found Gigolo Joe and Perfect Pete. The Pete model was defunct, and Joe was booked solid until next Tuesday, so he settled for his date with Jane, drank his coffee and tried to build a plan of attack for the Registry.

o0o

Bodie woke feeling disconcerted. Outside the Rains were falling solidly, drops pattering musically on the roof of Sarah’s conservatory, where he’d finally settled down to think about what Sarah had told him of Newbolt. He’d never been implicated in anything, and a man’s private life was his own, but there were rumours - declared by his Press Office to be libellous if ever seen in print - and Sarah wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t let him in her house. Although he wasn’t banned from the legal cathouses, those running under the government’s radar and who could afford to be choosy wouldn’t entertain him, and two had closed down rather than open their doors to him.

And he was seeing Doyle almost every night.

Bodie sat up and rubbed his eyes, took a deep breath, then stood and stretched. Doyle could clearly look after himself - though Sarah’d had a point when she said that bothered him. He’d never liked coppers - they’d been at the centre of everything wrong with ‘Pool Island - but for all his proud introduction, Doyle didn’t come across as an ordinary helmet. What made him different, what was it that kept him on the edge of Bodie’s mind, in the back of his thoughts, and somewhere in the night-hardness of his cock, the centre of his dreams?

Because yet again he’d dreamed about Doyle.

Sarah was working an afternoon shift, and long gone, so Bodie got up and rummaged freely in the refrigerator for breakfast, made himself a huge mug of tea, sat down with his mobile and paused. There was a chance that what he was about to do wouldn’t work, for all Mike was the best in the business - and he was expensive with it. And yet... he wanted CI5, with its promise of action and making a difference. Of being on the side of the angels. If that meant taking a risk or two, then he wouldn’t be the right man for Cowley if he _didn’t_ do this.

The call buzzed and clicked for what seemed like forever once he was connected, and twice he could have sworn he heard background voices, perhaps where lines were cutting across other lines, were being diverted and cross-channelled and encrypted again and again and...

“This is The Corporation, how can we help you today?”

“You still owe me a tenner.”

“Bodie! Thought you were still abroad...”

“You can get bored even of Rouge City,” Bodie said, “We safe?”

“Bo-die...” Mike sounded hurt, Bodie knew he’d be grinning and tapping in to some other app as he spoke.

“You got time for a favour in return for that tenner?”

“I’m ears...”

“I need you to find me a file - Raymond Doyle.”

Barely a pause.

“From the Met?”

“Very impressive.”

“It’s an old name, there’s not many.”

Still, instantaneous - maybe this would be easier than he’d thought.

“Not the Met these days - CI5.”

Mike whistled under his breath. “Now _that_ will cost more than a tenner - it’s a cash job, that.”

Damn - old technology, and only deliverable on paper and in person. “I’ll pay.”

“I can’t promise anything...”

“When can I collect?”

“Can’t promise anything from CI5,” Mike repeated, “Their boss doesn’t always plug in. He’s a bit _cash_ himself. I’ll know in an hour and you can buy me that pint.”

There was a tap at his ear, then a rustling, what sounded like a sudden sizzle, and then a low hum. Bodie hung up and did some quick calculations. He’d taken a job flying tonight for one of Krivas’ mates - a straightforward trip over to the Continent and back, but it paid well for what it was, and he needed to make the effort to prove himself to one or two new faces in the old crowd. He had time before then to get to Mike’s favourite haunt, pick up the papers and go through them, and he’d need that time because they’d neither photograph nor scan - and they’d disintegrate within just a couple of hours of being exposed to daylight.

He necked the rest of his tea, grabbed a couple of sausage rolls from the fridge and nuked them to warmth, then left the house quietly behind him.

o0o

“Well hello, Jane - how’s the game?” Doyle took a moment to appreciate Just Jane, silhouetted against the doorway of her cathouse, all sleek black leather, razor cut hair, and as many contrasting curves as a bloke could want.

Jane smiled, reached out a finger and hooked it over the collar of his shirt, drew him into her room, which was dimly shadowed, lit by flickering candles and seductive glowsticks, and scented with something... He couldn’t place it, something floral and subtle and expensive. There was music, a lazy wafting of flutes and pan pipes that was mesmerising, almost hypnotic.

Time to keep a careful watch on his credits.

“Is this your first time with... one of us?” she asked coyly, reaching an arm above her and twirling elegantly. She moved her other hand slowly down her own body, then up and across, and Doyle felt his breath hitch despite himself. Something soft, something easy. He’d paid for this, after all... unless of course he claimed it on expenses. How would old Cowley go for that, a love mecha on expenses? He nearly laughed aloud at the thought, managed to keep himself to a wide smile that Jane took as meant for her. She reached out to him, manoeuvred him back to the bed, and ran her hands over his chest, down to his hips, leaned in close enough to kiss, though she didn’t. Instead she teased his lips with her own, played warm breath across his cheek and to his ear. He settled down to enjoy the ride - he’d interrogate her afterwards - but to his surprise she came back to his cheek, to the bump and shadow of his implant where the bone had been broken all those years ago.

“Did someone treat you harshly, Ray?” she asked softly, “Someone treat you mean?” 

He sighed in vague answer, wanting her to breathe in his ear again, to concentrate on the job in hand.

She licked quickly at his cheek, twitched her head to one side, and when she spoke again her voice was more lowly pitched, and there was a kind of sternness to it. “Do you like that, Ray? Is that what you’d like me to do to you, Ray? Would you...?”

“No,” he said quickly, “No, I don’t like that.” Damn - _that_ was the job in hand, that was what he needed to be concentrating on. “But... what if I did?”

Jane drew back slightly, twitched her head again so that she merely sounded puzzled when she spoke. “Would you like to play domination games or would you like to be seduced?” Another twitch, and her voice sounded younger, much more innocent. “Perhaps you would like to seduce me? I’m Jane - you can name your own game...” She looked at him for a moment and then lowered her eyelashes and waited.

“I want you to...” he thought quickly, “Tell me a story... tell me what you do with other people.”

“Ah... the voyeur game. Would you like to go and watch...?”

“No! No, just... tell me stories. Do you go to bed with very powerful people?”

“I go to bed with whoever wants me,” Jane said, “That’s the name of my game... I have been to bed with... “ She paused coyly. “But I can’t say who, that would be telling...” She leaned in again, kissed him this time, and she felt soft and warm and all too real for something that wasn’t orga.

He pulled away, but didn’t object when she knelt on the bed, straddling him. “Have you gone to bed with the Prime Minister?”

“The Prime Minister is married - he’s a very good boy.”

“What about his Ministers - are they good too? What do they do?” 

“Some of them are good,” she said, writhing against him so that he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the moment, “And some of them are very... very...” She slid to the ground again, so that this time she was kneeling between his legs, “...bad.” Her hands smoothed their way along his thighs, and she ducked her head a moment, so that he swallowed hard.

“Tell me about a bad one,” he said, “Tell me about... a minister who likes to spank you.”

“Ah,” she said, lifting her head so that her hair fell around her face, dark contrast to the glossy red of her lips. “She puts me in a harness, and then she takes her...”

“A man,” he interrupted, desperately trying not to wonder who she meant. “Tell me about a man in the government with silver hair who spanks you hard.”

Jane paused, gazing up at him for a moment before she spoke. “I don’t know any men like that.”

“But a friend told me that you and...” Take a chance or not? “Renton told me that you and Minister Newbolt were... ow!” Jane’s grip on his legs strengthened to the point of pain - more bruises, then - her fingernails digging into his skin.

“I don’t know any men like that.”

“You’re hurting me... Did he hurt you, Jane?”

“That’s not my game.” She stood abruptly, turned away from him with her hands on her hips, for all the world like a real woman who’d been upset. 

“But you said we could play...”

She turned back to him, twitched her head again, and said solemnly “We do not play to hurt! Mechas do not play to hurt. Or...” a whisper now, “To be hurt...”

“The Minister wouldn’t hurt you...”

“Minister Newbolt is bad trouble. His friends are not welcome here.”

“Jane, I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to upset you. What about Renton, did he...?”

“His friends are not welcome here.” Jane strode to the door, all business now, and opened it. “Your payment will be refunded within the day, if this is not to your satisfaction then you should know that all love mechas are subject to Regular Law and that we have both the rights and responsibilities of that employment. You may contact your ombudsman if...”

“It’s alright - I’m not going to complain...” He walked obediently to the door, paused to meet her gaze as she stood there, waited until she lifted her eyes to his. “I’m sorry Jane.” He kissed her cheek gently, gave her arm a squeeze, and then stepped out into the street, not sure whether he felt pleased with himself or more confused than ever as the door closed quietly behind him.

Had he achieved anything? He already knew that Newbolt was into pain and humiliation, but... She couldn’t look frightened, because she was just a mecha, but for a moment he could have sworn she had.

o0o

Bodie was in the pub on time to receive the first of his tracers, a tiny paper-thin thing that sunk ink into his thumb and then dissolved with the warmth of his skin. The ink gave him coordinates, the coordinates sent him to a supermarket, he bought a bar of chocolate and checked his till receipt, walked obediently to the park and sat in the shade to eat it. In the dim, dappled light he read the combination on the inside of the plastic, then wandered over and retrieved his “left luggage”. Under what seemed to be a mountain of dirty shirts and one pair of ridiculously frilly pink knickers, was the envelope containing a copy of Doyle’s file. He took himself back to his flat, checked it for bugs and cameras, made himself another cup of tea, and sat down to read.

o0o

Bodie’s booking alert had come late, bare minutes before he was due at Newbolt’s, but Doyle was glad enough that it had come at all to worry about the timing. The hotel was mid-range, just far enough outside the New City that it was quiet, and apparently catered to an older, more genteel clientele. It didn’t seem like Bodie’s sort of place at all. He was looked at askance by more than one person - staff and guest both - when he checked in with his operating tag, ignored them with lofty disdain and marched straight-backed upstairs to wait for Bodie and his release from the Skin.

Newbolt had been distracted tonight, had gone through the motions of a domination scenario - _scenario_ , Doyle thought scathingly, there was no scenario in a Minister dominating a mecha - but had fucked him almost automatically, had fallen asleep, in fact, leaving him tied to the rail at the end of the bed, uncomfortably bent. He’d managed to free himself, hadn’t dared to leave when he’d been booked until seven, or even to sleep whilst Newbolt was still there, despite his nearly sleepless day.

All he wanted now was Bodie, and then a bed - and unfortunately he needed then in that order.

The one thing - the _one thing_ \- that made the night worthwhile, was that just after his arrival Newbolt had forgotten himself long enough to respond to a phone call with the caller’s name - and for the second time it was Renton, and for the first time Newbolt had reached across to Doyle’s tag and switched him into blind mode.

Doyle paced the room, mostly to stay awake, partly repeating the conversation over and again to himself, trying to filter out anything that might make sense, that might give them something else to go on. He swung around when the door opened, saw to his relief that it was Bodie, made himself stand still and quiet. Bodie paused too, and they looked each other up and down for a moment.

“Thought you might not come,” he said eventually, a kind of peace offering.

“Job’s a job.” Bodie shrugged out of his own jacket, hung it on a hook behind the door, and stepped over to dim the window. “You ready?”

“What do you think?” He waited until Bodie had stepped closer, then turned around, presenting his back. He realised he was holding his breath, let it out when he felt Bodie’s firm touch on his neck, the slow slide of Bodie’s finger down his back, lower and lower...and stop.

But Bodie didn’t move away quickly as he usually did, instead Doyle felt the edge of the Skin pulled slightly, as if Bodie was testing it, and then a hand, warm and heavy, on his shoulder, holding him in place. He turned his head, twisted just far enough to see Bodie looking down at him, at his back, and then that finger was back again, and this time Doyle felt it tracing one of the long bruises Newbolt had lashed onto him, then another that crossed it, then another.

“I’ve been hearing about your Minister,” Bodie said at last. “Bit rough, is he?”

Doyle shrugged, twisted a little further, but Bodie didn’t let go. “Job’s a job,” he said, trying not to close his eyes against the way Bodie was touching him - softly, gently.

“Thought that thing was supposed to stop bullets?” 

“So I’m told. Doesn’t mean I won’t feel it the next day, apparently.” 

Bodie still hadn’t moved away. “Does Cowley know about this?”

“How the hell should I know?” He shrugged more pointedly this time, pulled himself free and turned to face him.

“I mean - do you need to get out? Even Cowley can’t expect you to take that kind of beating on a regular basis.”

“It’s just bruises - it’s whether he sticks to mechas for his games that worries me. You ‘ave been hearing about Newbolt, ‘aven’t you. Connection?”

Bodie shook his head. “Not with the case. I asked Sarah.”

“Your bit on the side? What would she know?” He winced inwardly - he hadn’t meant to attack again, but why the hell Bodie thought he couldn’t hack it...

“She’s got contacts - it’s why I keep in with her. It’s why I went to see her in the first place.”

“And you trust her?”

Bodie nodded. “She owes me. And - “ he interrupted Doyle’s sceptical look, “I’ve worked with her a long time. She’s alright.”

Doyle looked at him again, straight into dark eyes, for long moments, and eventually he nodded himself. “Yeah, alright...” Bodie hadn’t moved, was still standing close, so Doyle finally pushed gently past him, stripping properly as he went. It had felt harder than ever climbing into the Skin after his illicit day of freedom from it.

He showered slowly, half-puzzling over Bodie’s behaviour, half-worrying about it. What was he up to now? Trying to put him off the scent? But his eyes felt gritty after their long night awake, and he let it sink to the back of his mind, washed and dried himself and cleaned the Skin on automatic, emerged back into the room to find Bodie already in bed.

“Nothing new at your end, then?” Bodie asked, even as he jumped up to take his own turn in the bathroom, pissing and cleaning his teeth with the door open.

Doyle signed, rubbed his hands across his face as if that would keep him awake, and sat up slightly. “Actually… Maybe.”

“Maybe?” There was a splashing of water, and Bodie emerged once more, face and shoulders wet, a towel in one hand. He dried himself as Doyle spoke, told him about Newbolt’s phone call, and Doyle watched absently, following the path of water drops that slid over firm muscles, down the smooth plane of Bodie’s chest, and lower, still lower…

“You think he suspects something?” Bodie asked when he’d finished.

“I dunno, he’s kept things pretty close until now, but… it could be just what it seems, a slip-up.”

“He turned you off.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s taken this long for him to get comfortable around you.” Bodie threw his towel behind him into the bathroom, climbed back into bed and waved a hand at the dimmer switch. “I gather he’s got attached to his mechas before.”

Doyle shrugged. “If he hadn’t I don’t supposed Cowley would have sent me in. Mind you, I dunno how long they’ll let it go on.” He told Bodie about Jane.

“The mechas? They’ll take the credits and run, that’s what they do.”

Doyle shook his head thoughtfully. “What do they want credits for?”

“It’s in their programming - they go straight to the corporations, don’t they.”

“Maybe…”

“‘course they do. You only got the name again?” Bodie pulled them back to business.

Doyle yawned. “Yeah, everything else was too cryptic. I sent it to Cowley just in case the lab can make anything of it, but… This Renton – he’s not one of your mob, then?”

“Nah,” Bodie began, then shrugged. “Could be - I don’t know everyone in the business, there’s been a lot of new blood since my day. I’ll keep asking around…” He paused, seemed to look at Doyle consideringly, eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“There is someone I’ve not asked yet who might know the name.” He stopped again, looked past Doyle to the simwindow and gazed at the distant twilight mountain range as if it was real. 

“Yeah?”

Bodie lay still, pursed his lips.

“Well, when you can be bothered going to ask, you let me know.” Unsettled, Doyle let himself be sarcastic, be as sharp and stroppy as he wanted to be, slid down in the bed and shut his eyes at last. He was so tired it almost hurt to have them closed, a dull ache that…

“Thought maybe you should come on this one.”

He opened his eyes. At the same time Bodie finally looked back from the window, tipped his head down to look fully at Doyle, and despite his tiredness, Doyle knew his own face was as hard as Bodie’s, was as challenging and... 

...and then Bodie smiled, a wry twist of his lips that acknowledged everything that had gone between them so far, that offered them a second beginning, another chance. A kind of warmth tapped cautiously, waited to be let in. “We’re not coming up with much on our own,” he said, “Thought maybe we should try working together. You might pick up something I miss from knowing him too well.”

Carefully, feeling himself still guarded, but hopeful at the same time, Doyle nodded. “Yeah, alright,” he said, rode out the jolts and bouncing as Bodie at last settled down into the bed properly, turned onto his stomach and closed his eyes. He lay facing Doyle though, and Doyle studied his cheeks and lips and eyelashes, thought about what they’d do tomorrow, would do on the case, together, until his own eyes closed again and he slid into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

o0o

Marty Martell’s current office was aboard the Woolwich Ferry, and they caught the midday boat from Plumstead with bare minutes to spare. Doyle had been hard to wake, and bad-tempered with it, until he’d been reminded that they had a job to do. Christ but he hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing him, hoped he’d keep his mouth shut and his eyes open.

There was no chance of Martell appearing until they were at least half an hour into the sailing, so they stood against the railings on the upper deck to try and catch what sun there was, Doyle closing his eyes and letting his face tilt up to it. Bodie wasn’t expecting trouble, but he stood guard anyway, drawn back again and again to the dark bags and shadows that bruised Doyle’s face, to the strange bump that was one cheekbone - must have been a seriously botched surgery, that, what was the story there? - to the way it all crashed together to make him…

To make him what?

 _Strangely beautiful_ … He stamped on the whisper. Doyle was a helmet, he might yet prove useful in a scrap, and he was Bodie’s… _partner_ … on this one job, but that was all. 

He stared determinedly out across the water, past the last skeletal glimpses of the Old Barrier, almost all gone now, to the drones and flyers constantly buzzing around Wharf Towers. Like flies around a corpse, he thought cynically, not impressed with the money that had been lavished on shoring up the submerged infrastructure. If it’d been on dry land that’d be one thing, but all the way out here? Millionaire’s ghetto, he thought, and he knew he was half jealous.

“Bodie, dear chap, good to see you again.”

Doyle’s eyes snapped open, and his whole body sang tension at the sound of Martell’s voice and his tight black leather look, and while Bodie didn’t entirely blame him, he shot him a quick glare – _shut up_ – before letting Marty shake his hand.

“I like your new offices.”

“Oh well, you know me Bodie – I’ve always felt… _restricted_ in four walls. And walls have ears.”

“And out here they’d need to be big ears,” Doyle cut in, and when Bodie glanced at him, he was looking Martell up and down in… disbelief? Bodie smirked. The leather got some people that way.

Marty eyed him back. “Right.”

“Ray Doyle, my _partner_ ,” Bodie said hurriedly, “Marty Martell.”

“Hmmn.” Martell sniffed and turned away, probably miffed at the implication. _Hands off – he’s mine_. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He gestured across the water. “Amazing to think that the Vikings used to sail up here a thousand years ago. Raid our cities…”

“Rob all the women, rape all the men.”

Martell looked back at Doyle, and Bodie closed his own eyes briefly, not sure whether to laugh or cry. _Shut up_!

“If you like that sort of thing…”

“Marty’s one of the world’s leading experts, Ray.” He tried distraction again - and a bit of flattery couldn’t hurt.

“On what?”

“I specialise in handguns and rifles.”

“What, sporting?”

Again that look from Marty - what was Doyle playing at?

“Depends what you mean by _sport_.”

“So… hunting rifles?”

“If that’s what you want, yes.”

Doyle had straightened himself when Martell appeared, now he relaxed back against the railing once more, arms stretched wide on either side of him, one foot lifted to rest on a rung, hips thrust forward. “And if I want something else?” 

Predictably, Marty looked him slowly up and down, a small smile on his face. “Then I think we’d better go into my other office…”

He led them downstairs to the lower deck, then lower still along a narrow corridor. Bodie had made sure he walked between Martell and Doyle, and he watched the conscious sway of Martell’s leathered backside with no more than a roll of his eyes. Bloody Marty… bloody _Doyle_! 

Martell stopped at a door, scanned it open and then ushered them inside. It was small, dimly lit and shadowed, but when Bodie flicked on his phone to check for bugs, it was clean. There was a small bar at one end, and Martell sashayed towards it, picked up a bottle of something that gleamed darkly golden in the half-light, poured them each a glass.

“Remember that consignment of one-eighties you wanted for the Gulf that time, Bodie? Remember the job we had getting them out of there - and getting the money out of the ruler? I hope this isn’t that sort of deal, Bodie.”

“Nope. No deal, not this time. I want your help, Marty.” 

Martell eyed Doyle again. “For free, of course.”

“Naturally.” _Back off_. “Think of it as good will.”

“Oh I will, I will…” He passed around the glasses - whisky, and good stuff. “Well what do you want?”

“What do you know about Newbolt?”

“The minister? He’s a real meanie, you know that.”

“We know,” Doyle said, “We’ve tried him.”

Martell’s eyebrows rose. “You have?”

“We’re looking for one of his dogs,” Bodie said, “Renton. Heard anything?”

Marty looked thoughtful. “Not a whisper - you sure he’s in the same market?”

Bodie shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not - but if he is then he’s crossing Newbolt’s business and yours. And we want him.”

“I bet you do - sounds like he could be bad news.”

Doyle snorted. “Right!”

“Bad for business - not good for our reputation.” Marty seemed to be talking himself around, but he didn’t go any further, didn’t say anything more.

“Doesn’t do ours much good either,” Bodie tried, but Martell did not more than sip again at his drink, run his eyes up and down Doyle again.

“Alright,” he said at last. “Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”

And that, Bodie knew, was that. They shook hands again, and he watched with distaste as Martell shook Doyle’s hand too - more slowly, lingering. 

He pushed Doyle ahead of him and out the door, back to the upper decks just in time to feel the slight thud as they docked at Old Greenwich, and they joined the queue to disembark. Bugger the expense, they’d get a flyer back to Town - he wanted to get Doyle out of Marty’s range while the going was good.

Doyle, however, turned surprisingly good-natured eyes on him as they stood on the shore, letting the tourists mill around them. “You known him long, then?”

“Long enough,” Bodie said. “And despite what he says, he owes me.”

“Right.” He sniffed, grinned broadly, and turned to survey the Observatory itself. “You hungry?”

“What, here? On expenses?”

Doyle tipped his head to one side. “Why not? Let’s give it a whirl - nice discreet table…”

“Cowley’d kill you!”

“Nah…”

It was tempting - but it was also getting on, and they still had to get back to Town. “Nah -you know what I see for you? Half a pound of charred minced beef, sesame bun, sliced onion, assorted relishes…”

“Eat on the premises, or take away?”

“Oh, on the premises - nothing but the best…” 

They wandered towards the flyer stand, chatting amiably about this and that, and Bodie surprised himself by realising that, despite Marty, despite Sarah and Newbolt and Cowley himself, he felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. Doyle was easy to talk to when he was like this.

“So how’d you meet Martell?”

Bodie took a deep breath.

o0o

Twenty four hours passed before anything changed - except that Doyle managed to catch up on both some sleep and some time for the bruises to heal, when Newbolt was publically and very visibly involved in a tour of the Southern Africas. His phone rang as he sat at the hotel bar, waiting for Bodie - but it wasn’t Martell calling with information, but George Cowley himself.

“Have you come across a man called Johnson, Saul Johnson?” Cowley asked him, sounding terse even over the phone. 

Doyle waved away a tall blond approaching with a certain look in his eyes, turned his wrist so that it was obvious he was speaking into his mobile - making a tryst, perhaps even on a sex call. “Name’s not familiar.”

“He may be using an alias. This is the last known footage of him.”

Doyle stared at the film as it played across the small screen, too small to see clearly, so he turned casually in his seat, letting his jacket fall open, and projected the image onto the dark lining. Still not ideal, but... “He looks familiar, but I can’t say for certain right now.”

“Well keep your eye out for him, we’ve established a link with the Minister and potentially with Krivas.”

“Krivas again? I thought he was out of it… What’s his link with the Minister?”

“A dead girl,” Cowley said dryly, “One Samantha Bevins, Johnson’s girlfriend, found murdered in a hotel room last night. We do know that on several occasions, apparently when Johnson was out of the country, she also spent the night with the Minister.”

“So’s half the City,” Doyle muttered, “That doesn’t prove much.”

“No, but it’s our best connection so far - there is also a rumour that Johnson not only knows Krivas, but has worked with him in the past.”

“Does Johnson know about the murder?”

“The police are trying to find him to inform him now. He’s apparently somewhere on holiday in the Alps, though why he didn’t take her with him is a mystery.”

“Right... Have you heard from Bodie?”

“He reported in on schedule. Why?”

Doyle frowned. “He’s late.”

“Aye well, I expect you’ll have to be patient there. Do you have anything else for me?”

“Only the latest list of faces I sent you.”

“Good, we’ll go through them and hope that we can make further connections, particularly with our friend Johnson. Out.”

“Out...” Doyle was left saying to empty airwaves. He slid the phone back into his wrist, let himself relax against the velveted armchair. There was no time management in undercover work, he reminded himself, and Bodie was as much undercover as he was, for all it was with his old cronies. _With Sarah_ an invidious voice suggested, so that he had to consciously push it to one side. Focus. After all, bearing in mind that Bodie’d effectively joined the “other side” when he signed on with the army, he…

Around him _L’hôtel d’Angleterre_ was a sea of calm bustle: international suits striding purposefully across the foyer, intent on breakfast or business or both; tourists wafting their way from breakfast room to lift to reception - staffed by an actual human; the occasional discreet courier arriving with files that presumably couldn’t be entrusted to the airwaves. Doyle felt himself eyed speculatively by the portermechs and various hotel directors as they went about their duties - this wasn’t, after all, the sort of place where love mechas were welcome to lounge around making pick-ups, or even where they could check in independently of a human. 

“Why the hell did you choose this place?”

Doyle turned his head as nonchalantly as he could to find Bodie standing just behind him - where the hell had he come from?

“Thought it’d make a change. Besides, I’ve got this evening off again, he’s back on an all-nighter in the House, and I can’t follow him there. Fancied a bit of luxury.”

“Too bad you won’t be able to take advantage of it,” Bodie said, sounding pleased enough that Doyle frowned. 

“Oh yeah?” he managed, neutrally. Either Bodie had a lead or he was being a supercilious bastard again, but either way it would have to wait until they were somewhere more private.

“Upstairs. Come on, I’ll sign us in then, shall I?”

Upstairs proved to be as lush as downstairs, done out in reds and golds and marbles. The simwindow was a distant misty view of some old palace or other, suitably unobtrusive but exotic, recalling other times, drowned worlds. 

Doyle secured the door behind them, scrambling the circuits so that no override could obtain entry, and turned to find Bodie leaning against the bedpost of an enormous, canopied bed watching him, waiting for his attention. “Well?” he asked, crossing the room to the other side of the bed, feeling strangely self-conscious as he started to strip, dropping his clothes onto a chair.

Bodie’s gaze followed him. “There’s someone I need you to see, might be a connection to the case. He’s got a scrambler on him so I can’t get footage.”

“Who?”

“Dunno his name, but he’s tight with Krivas right now, and I’m sure I overheard them talking about a job they’ve got on. He paused, face grim. “Not the job in Russia. He’s slippery too, hard to pin down, but he’s got a meeting set for nine tonight, and we can be there. Could be Renton.”

“Lucky I wasn’t working.”

Bodie frowned. “You’d have got out of it for this. Sprung an oil leak.” He looked at Doyle, who’d paused with his suit half undone, gaze just a little too low for comfort. “You enjoying that Skin, or what?”

“ _What_ ,” Doyle answered emphatically, letting his trousers slip to the floor, striding defiantly to stand in front of Bodie. “You think this is kicks, _you_ try wearing it.”

“Nah.” Was it his imagination, or was Bodie’s voice softer somehow, a note of understanding, maybe? “Ruin these good looks in something like that?”

Maybe not. 

Fingers slid down his back, cool air insinuating its way onto his body as the Skin peeled away, and there was that tingling as Bodie’s flesh met his, electricity upon electricity upon electricity.

“Better you than me, old son.” And that at least had the ring of honesty about it.

“You’re not keen on mechas, are you?” Doyle asked, reaching for one of the neatly folded red dressing gowns on the end of the bed, pulling it around himself. It was warm... concealing. Beneath it his own skin was alive to the fabric, to every movement and brush of cloth. _Remnants of the Skin_ , he told himself, that’s all it was.

“Not much. Seen too many of them go rogue.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” He stretched. He’d take a shower, get away from the world for five minutes. From Bodie.

“Dunno why people bother with ‘em, myself.”

“Convenience,” Doyle said vaguely, escaping across the room. He turned though, at the door, the devil in him wanting to take Bodie down a peg or two again, wanting to unsettle him. He preferred Bodie unsettled, as he had been when they’d met Martell. He pulled the dressing gown open, let it slip from his shoulders, and hooked it over his finger, lifting it behind him. “Just convenience,” he said. He let Bodie see him, all of him, with a half smile and a hard on, and then he turned and vanished into the bathroom.

Bodie had a lead though - and Cowley had a lead, and if he could only make the connection between them then maybe they’d get this thing wrapped up, and he could leave the Skin behind him for good. He refused to think that CI5 might decide he was experienced in its use, that he’d have to choose between staying with the Squad and being free of it once and for all. And Bodie.

Doyle flicked the taps on, turned the temperature as high as he could bear, and stood under the downpour for a moment, feeling the water batter his shoulders, his back. He turned around, so that it fell on his chest, slid down over his stomach. It rained over his cock too, a shower of touches not quite hard enough, not human enough, but so much better than Newbolt’s punishing grip, so that he leaned back, closed his eyes, wrapped a hand around himself, imagined another hand, another body there with him. Bodie...

“No reason to use mechas unless it’s something a human can’t do.”

 _Christ_! Bodie’d followed him in! Doyle’s eyes snapped open, and he scanned the taps to cold. The shower door was tastefully frosted, but he could see Bodie moving about, from sink to toilet to basin and mirror. 

He hadn’t seen, he couldn’t have seen. He was rabbiting on about using mechas at pressure, and about making them look human, and...

Doyle shivered, squeezed shampoo into his hand, and took a breath.

“Yeah, but mechas are...”

o0o

The Fair Moon hung huge above Aldenham Park, a monstrosity of a thing, bulging with light and electricity. Somewhere in the stadium the crowd roared in excitement, and Bodie could hear engines revving over heavy rock music. The world at its best and worst, he thought, people together, relaxed but full of energy, entertained and slightly feral with it, lending the night an edge, something _alive_.

He looked over at Doyle, wanting to share the buzz of it, of being a part of that strange mass of humanity that they both, ultimately, were working to protect.

Doyle was scowling.

“What’s wrong?”

“Flesh Fairs give me the creeps.”

“Eh? This place?” Bodie looked surprised, “Why? Good old-fashioned entertainment, this!” He emphasised his point by turning to leer appreciatively at one of the scantily clad hostesses.

“Watching people get torn apart for kicks?” 

“They’re mechas, not people! Hunks of electricity and wiring and plastic - not a drop of blood between them!” Did Doyle really believe that mechas were the same as living human beings? He hadn’t argued that strongly this morning. Best not to think about this morning, about the way Doyle had looked in the bathroom, half-hidden by the steam and the shower door... “You’re not a _sympathiser_ are you? Want to free the poor mechas from their lives of drudgery, do you?” he asked tauntingly.

“It’s not as simple as that!”

“No it’s not - you need a mecha for your housework, or to drive you around, or,” Bodie looked Doyle let his eyes wander over Doyle’s body knowingly, “for sex - and they’re there. And they want to be there, because...”

“Because?”

Bodie took a deep breath, looked away. Bloody Doyle. Surely he knew? “Because they know that we’ll die and they won’t. One day they’ll be all that’s left.” And _they_ weren’t real. For all he did, for all he was, for all he tried to be... He would die. Doyle would die. And _they’d_ still be there, following orders, following their programmes - soulless, conscienceless.

“Yeah well, I’m feeling just a _little_ bit vulnerable tonight...”

Bodie looked at him - a less vulnerable looking man it was impossible to imagine, Doyle was all hard muscle and solid planes underneath the Skin, and... “ _Fuck_.”

“It’d bring a whole new meaning to the Rite of Blood and Electricity, wouldn’t it?” Doyle said with a quirk to his lips, before looking away, looking around. “Just keep an eye out for anyone with a Scanner, eh?”

Fuck, he hadn’t thought of that. Doyle was wearing the Skin, and he’d brought him to a Flesh Fair. There was no time to find somewhere safe for Doyle to take it off - nowhere around that _would_ be safe. “No one has Scanners at these things unless they’re part of the show,” he said, not sure which of them he wanted to convince. They’d come too far, were too close for it to fall apart now.

“It’ll be fine,” Doyle dismissed him with a wave, “Just... keep an eye out.”

Bodie caught his eye, nodded. There was nothing else he could say.

“Where’s your man?”

“They’re meeting behind the cages - the place will be chaos, he likes to meet in crowds, it should be fairly simple to get close enough for you to ID him.”

“ _If_ I recognise him.”

“You will.” Bodie was sure of it. There’d been something in the way Sarah’d spoken about him, described his connection with Krivas. This bloke wasn’t simply a messenger, he was something far more integral to Krivas’ plans.

They wandered the fair for a while, trying to look like they were enjoying themselves, though the shine had worn off for Bodie. It was dark, the field was hazed with a mixture of actual fog and smoke machines, lights strobing multi-coloured across them. It would be impossible for anyone to recognise Doyle as a mecha, but all the same he wanted to be done, and he wanted to be away from the risk.

He’d fucked up because he’d been looking forward to seeing Doyle again, to matching wits, to fighting back. To watching him move. He’d fucked up.

At five to nine they wandered casually towards the backstage area, a mess of tents and caravans and storage huts which backed nearly onto the cages, so that the area between the two was virtually a thoroughfare of workers taking shortcuts across the field, and the more curious of the audience, hoping for a final bloodthirsty glimpse of the mechas they were about to see destroyed. Here and there people stopped to talk, to shout, to fight over whether they preferred the Acid Drop or the Four Way Pull.

And there in the middle of it all was Younger, talking to a shorter man with his back to them. 

“That’s them,” he nudged Doyle, pulling up his hood and settling the collar of his coat more firmly around his neck against the chance that Younger would spot him. He took out his mobile, pretended to take a few backstage pictures, looked casually at the previews. The man with Younger was nothing more than scrambled pixels. “That’s him,” he confirmed, turning around so that Doyle had a clear view.

“Saul Johnson.”

“Who?”

“That’s Saul Johnson - he’s supposed to be out of the country. Cowley’s _very_ interested in him. Who’s the other bloke?”

“Kid Younger, messenger boy for Krivas.”

“Is he now?” Doyle turned back to him and caught his eye for a moment, his face hard. “Then Cowley was right, we’ve practically got them - Krivas, Younger, Johnson, Newbolt.”

“Practically...” Bodie reminded him. This was it, this was the break they’d been waiting for. When he saw Sarah again he’d... well, he’d buy her a drink, anyway.

“I’ve got the Skin set to record,” Doyle said, “There’s a chance Cowley’s Boffins will be able to descramble Johnson, maybe even filter out the audio.”

“In this racket?” Bodie ducked his head as Younger and Johnson separated, Johnson passing close by them as he strode across the field.

“Worth following them?” Doyle wondered, staring after Johnson, his camera presumably tick-ticking away.

“Nah, I can find Younger again, and they’ve got Johnson tagged down at The Barristers . Let’s go home, shall we?” 

“Yeah,” Doyle nodded, tapped him on the back to get him moving. “I suppose we’d better give _L’hotel_ a miss - stick to the regs.”

“Two nights is two nights,” Bodie said, “Even if one was barely half a night.”

“And that in the day...”

Bodie grinned, feeling lighter again, just as he had at Greenwich. “We could always...” He was drowned out as two of the fair’s Hounds approached, bikes glaring and roaring in the night, the riders helmetless now that they weren’t out tracking mechas or performing in the arena, although their machines were still tricked out in ferocious guise. Headlights gleamed through grilles, vicious teeth on devil dogs, designed to terrify and to thrill in equal measure. Good bikes though, decent engines underneath all that show. He watched as they circled a couple of giggling girls, revving suggestively. 

He turned to roll his eyes at Doyle and froze. One of the Hounds had left his scanner on, and as he circled around it shone brightly through Doyle’s leather jacket, through his shirt - but not through the Skin. It had settled on the Skin, a blue-white light that highlighted wires and circuits and chips.

Mecha.

Bodie watched as Doyle looked down in slow motion, as his eyes widened, as he turned his head to look up at the Hounds. The Hounds exchanged their own glances, turning their bikes...

Run. _Run_! Doyle had already snapped into movement, heading back towards the arena where they could maybe slip away amongst the tents and buildings and crowds, and Bodie followed him, dodging people as best he could, pushing past them when he couldn’t. It was almost too late though, he could hear the cry being raised behind them.

“ _Mecha_!”

o0o

The crowd parted briefly in front of them, surprised into moving, but eventually some bright spark would decide to try his luck at winning the approval of the Hounds and a free ticket to the next show by tripping them, or trying to grab them. Doyle ducked under a cordon surrounding the show controls, where at least the bikes couldn’t follow, and through a narrow gap between scaffolding and the side of a storage shed, feeling as much as hearing Bodie follow. It was quieter there, the sound of the roaring crowds muffled, so he slowed a moment, but they couldn’t stay long.

They edged along the heavy canvas wall of the shed to the gap where it sat alongside something similar. He couldn’t hear the Hounds any more, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there - if they could get to the other side of the Fair, if they could get to the exit… An arm grabbed at him suddenly, and he reared back in surprise, so that Bodie walked into him, but it wasn’t a Hound or even ordinary Security - it was an arm stripped of flesh, a length of rods and wires and circuits that ended in skin-covered fingers, that reached up to a skin-covered face traced with tears.

“Help me, human,” the mecha begged, “Don’t let them…”

Bodie pushed him ruthlessly past, and he kept walking, because it didn’t matter how much he hated the Flesh Fairs, how convinced he was that pain-circuits were ultimately just nerve endings and therefore… well, there his thoughts were fuzzier, but… He caught a glimpse of a boy mecha as they went, looking around as if for the mother he had never had, felt again the heel of Bodie’s hand as he was urged on. No matter how wrong it was, it would be more wrong if he was the one who ended up sandwiched in the Auto Crash, if he didn’t have his own days left to cajole and argue and fight…

 _Enough_ he told himself, slowing to a stop as they reached the edge of the cage. They’d ended up closer to the arena rather than farther away, so that he could almost feel the heavy music thumping through the air, the excited roar of the crowd. There was a burst of flame as a hoop was set light, and a couple of the ring’s musclemen turned towards the caged mechas. He pushed Bodie further back into the shadows, and they waited as an old-fashioned, gangling stretch-droid was selected, taken, and manhandled out towards the cannon. If they could skirt the edge of the arena, maybe find somewhere quiet for him to de-Skin…

Flames blazed again as the luckless mecha was sent hurtling from the cannon and through the ring of fire, exploding so that they were showered with its gory shrapnel, a finger hitting the canvas just above their head, falling to lie on the ground in front of them. The crowd roared again, and there was movement beside them as dozens of mechas stepped back in horror.

“ _Go_!” Bodie urged, and he took the opportunity, before another mecha was claimed from the cage beside them, to slip between the next pair of sheds, emerging this time under the audience stands. They could run fairly freely here, crouched low and dodging the occasional semi-clothed and passionate couple, until they emerged on the other side into one of the tunnels lined with food stalls, hawkers crying their wares all around. They slowed, sauntering along for all the world as if they were there for the fun of it all.

A Hound appeared, trolling slowly through the crowd, head turning from side to side, scanner switched on and beaming brightly below its headlight. Doyle ducked casually into the Cornish pasty queue where it snaked along the side of the stall, and Bodie stood in front of him, leaning close as if to whisper secrets, to share a joke. The Hound passed by, but Doyle’s heart was beating heavily and too fast.

“Gotta get out of this,” he hissed into Bodie’s ear, trusting that Bodie would know he meant the Skin rather than just their situation. 

Bodie stilled against him for a moment, then straightened suddenly, took a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, “I’ve got an idea.”

“Great, what is it?”

But Bodie shook his head, slanting his gaze sideways to watch the Hound vanish into the distance. “Just follow me.”

“Where we going…?” Doyle asked, but it was too late, Bodie’d turned and grabbed his arm, was pulling him out of the queue and through the crowds towards the entrance to the Fair, its artificial moon glowing distantly with the promise of escape.

Their luck ran out nearly halfway there. Amongst the crowd, the hoards of people laughing and shouting, making their way to the arena or to the sideshows, dancing or wandering or simply standing still, another solitary Hound surprised them - on foot this time, his bike beside him on a stand, the front tyre half-on half-off as it was replaced by one of the Fair’s grease-marked jack-of-all-trades. But the scanner was switched on, and as Doyle dodged around a group of children playing with the scavenged remains of mecha, the wheel swung around, angling across him just as the Hound lifted his head.

They gained bare seconds as the man paused, as his eyes widened in surprise and he moved to turn on the communications link in his helmet and shout instructions, but that was all, he was off after them then, and they were barrelling through the crowds once again, twisting this way and that. Bodie was in front, and for all Doyle was inclined to leave him, to split up and make it easier for them to hide, there seemed to be more than just aimless escape to Bodie’s stride, Doyle would swear there was a purpose, a plan - _just follow me_.

Their head start meant they weren’t actually in the Hound’s eye - he was following the disturbance in the crowd, and Doyle could hear it swelling and closing and opening again behind them. Ahead of him Bodie ducked to one side, behind and along a string of public toilets, and then, all of a sudden, waited to grab his arm again and pulled him past a patiently waiting queue, and into the flimsy building he’d chosen. 

_They’d be cornered, they be trapped_ …

“Get ‘em off, sunshine,” Bodie snarled, shoving him towards a cubicle that had opened to reveal two half-grinning young men emerge, their smug eyes and half-done shirts leaving no one in any doubt about what they’d been up to. 

“Oi, wait yer turn,” someone complained half-heartedly, but mostly what Doyle saw behind him, as Bodie whipped him past the first bloke in line, were knowing looks, a lewd grin or two, and then nothing but Bodie, crowding close so that he could close the door behind them.

“Are you…?” he began, but then Bodie was kissing him, and tugging at his clothes, so that his jacket was off his shoulders and halfway down his arms, the buttons on his shirt all but torn off.

“Get ‘em _off_ ,” Bodie repeated, separating them long enough to speak, and to move his hands to Doyle’s trousers, to stare hard into his shocked face. “Get _it_ … where’s that _skin_ , sunshine…?”

 _Skin_ … On the other side of the door the men had started up a rollicking chant - “ _Off - off - off - off_ “ - and, between heartbeats, Doyle realised what Bodie was doing. Wriggling free of Bodie’s hands, he heeled off his trainers so that his trousers could be pushed off, let his shirt and jacket finally fall to the floor, and turned around, his hands thudding against the door in his urgency so that their audience clapped and barracked them again. “ _Give it to ‘im_ …”

Then Bodie’s fingers were sliding down his back, and alongside the extra tingle of electricity he could feel cooler air suddenly, the freedom of being himself again…

The good-natured shouting outside broke off suddenly, turned indignant, and away from what they were doing, from their cubicle. Knowing what it was, knowing what it must be, Doyle tore the Skin from his face almost before it had loosened, stripping it down his arms and then legs, bending awkwardly in the confined space to finally - at last, at last - pull it from his feet. 

“Fucking _Hound_ …” Doyle heard, and then someone was pounding at the door of the first cubicle, amidst more shouts and complaints. He managed to shove his feet back into his trousers, and then into trainers, but his shirt and jacket were somewhere behind Bodie, and he’d dropped the bloody Skin, he’d never manage it all in time…

The door vibrated at his back, and he looked up and caught Bodie’s eye and a glint of the devil, perhaps, because then he was being pulled forward again, and Bodie’s mouth was on his, his waist was being gripped tightly, and… _fuck_ , Bodie’d taken hold of his cock as well, and despite the chase, despite the Hound - maybe, he knew, partly because of them - he was half hard still from the Skin… 

It wasn’t Bodie’s fingers he could feel, he realised, lost somehow against Bodie’s lips, the surprise heat of it all, the shock of feeling Bodie as they leaned together _jeans undone and hard against his hip, pushing against him_ , it was the Skin itself, wrapped around his cock as if it was some kinky electronic sex toy. The wires and chips, he knew, would be plainly visible now that he wasn’t wearing it, and…

The door slammed open at last, kicked down, and there was the Hound. 

“Can’t a bloke get some _privacy_ around here?” Bodie growled, pulling away from him, and Doyle found himself blushing. He could see past the Hound to the interested faces outside, eyes appraising or appreciative or amused, and there he stood, naked but for his trousers around his ankles, and Bodie’s solid hand wrapped around the plaything on his cock.

The Hound glared at them, then moved on to the last cubicle, empty now. Doyle reached out an arm and slammed the door shut again, sagged for a moment against the cold, smooth wall behind him, and closed his eyes. 

He felt, rather than heard, Bodie straightening his own clothes, the rasp of his zip as it was pulled closed again, the clank of a belt buckle, and he made himself move too. He dragged his jeans up, managed to snag his shirt from the floor and his jacket underneath it, and got them on, then looked around for the Skin. It hung, half-tucked, from Bodie’s trouser pocket, and he reclaimed it, tucked it safely away and then took a deep breath, looked up and met Bodie’s eyes. 

They gazed at each other for a moment, then Bodie nodded slightly - _it’s all clear_ \- and Doyle reached back to open the door again. They emerged into the camaraderie of the queue, endured again the good-natured complaints and taunts, and then they were outside, and they were free to leave.

o0o

They walked back towards the city in a kind of daze, neither of them speaking, and not stopping until they were far from the Flesh Fair and its roaring crowds and gaiety, and then they checked into the first hotel they came across that was still open - _De Brown’s_ , old and famous and discreet enough not to ask questions when they had no luggage, not to question the state of Doyle’s clothes as long as Bodie’s mobile came up with a decent credit check as well as enough to pay for two nights in one of their best rooms.

Their daze took them up thickly carpeted stairs, past soothing pictures and through gentle music, to a room where they could finally close the door on everything but themselves.

Bodie turned, looked up at Doyle as he stood wide-eyed in the middle of the room, and something… something began a long unwinding inside him. 

Doyle stepped forward and into his arms as if they’d planned it, as if they’d come here for that very reason, and Bodie let himself be borne backwards, across the soft carpet to the softness of the bed, and down, down…

This time, as they undressed, they did it slowly and carefully and consciously, and there was the time and inclination for lingering kisses in between each piece of pointless cloth and useless strap and buckle. There was time to run his fingers along Doyle’s spine for the pure, clean pleasure of it, to pull him, compliant and half-smiling, into the shower and to stand under heavy jets of water, in the steam of the bathroom, where the night washed even further away from them and slid down drains and pipes to mingle with the rain and the river and the sea. 

Bodie soaped his hands with every intention of slicking them across and along and around Doyle’s body, was surprised to find himself being turned and kissed and soaped and caressed, gave in to it anyway.

He thought, as they moved together on the finely threaded cotton of the bed, that he had never felt anything quite like this, that it was the one thing he’d been waiting for, that life, now, must always be like this…

…and then Doyle gasped into his mouth, and Bodie felt him tighten and pulse and he kissed him harder, because there was nothing but Doyle, and Doyle’s movements against him, slower now and sated, but firm and slick, and…

And then there was nothing, for either of them, but the feel of each other’s skin and the slowing of each other’s heartbeat, and the sighing breath into sleep.

o0o

Bodie woke slowly, to soft pillows, soft sheets, a warm body beside him, and a feeling of having come home. He lay quietly, disconcerted, surely still dreaming. A good dream… He opened his eyes far enough to see that the simwindows were playing a gentle sunrise - they’d forgotten to re-set them last night - let them close again, reluctant to lose this feeling of well being. Reality would kick in soon enough, after all, whatever he’d forgotten would surface soon enough. The room smelled of fresh grass and something blossom-y. _Pretentious_ , he tried to think, but he breathed it in all the same, feeling a smile on his lips, another remnant of his dreams…

No - _reality_ \- of what had happened last night. 

Memory crept gently around him, that it was Doyle’s arm resting on his, Doyle’s hand curled on his shoulder, Doyle’s leg between his... Doyle’s cock, hard against his thigh.

The smile wouldn’t leave his face, the warmth, the… _contentment_ he was feeling.

Doyle… Doyle had run like the wind last night, was as fast as Bodie himself, and he’d been quick to catch on in the bogs too - like he had been with Marty. Brains as well as brawn after all, and not a whiff of your ordinary copper about him, the ones Bodie had known all his life. There’d been chances for him to do it - when he’d gone to visit that sexbot, for instance - but not a bribe, no blackmail, not on the take… He’d _paid_ for Just Jane, had talked about sticking her on his expense claim next month. No, not like an ordinary helmet at all, was Doyle, no wonder Cowley wanted him for CI5, no wonder...

And there, there it was, the other side of dreams and warmth and reality, a side he’d felt before, that had turned on him before, that he’d sworn he’d never let in again. When it took him, it took him hard and suddenly, and he never knew until it was too late and he’d fallen.

He’d fallen in love with Ray Doyle.

“Can ‘ear the data chips buzzing from here,” Doyle said suddenly, voice deep and low, and Bodie opened his eyes properly to see Doyle’s face inches from his, awake and alert and with the same hint of a smile that Bodie had felt, could still feel…

Dangerous, this. He’d better nip it in the bud, stop it before it got any worse, call it a temporary aberration and…

Doyle opened his mouth to say something else, but his eyes were wicked, and he licked his lips first, and Bodie was lost all over again.

“It’s a short circuit,” he murmured back, leaning across those inches so that his lips spoke the last word against Doyle’s lips, a tickling temptation before he kissed him again, as they had over and over the night before, more than he’d ever wanted to kiss anyone before. And this time he took control himself, turned Doyle onto his back and moved down the bed to kneel, to lift Doyle’s legs and bend down to suck his cock hard, determinedly, until Doyle cried out, and came, and Bodie swallowed, tasting him… Then he spat in his hand, not able to wait another minute, and finally let his own cock slide into Doyle’s arse… _so tight, god so smooth and tight and_ … Doyle’s eyes were still closed, his breathing still fast, he gasped when Bodie began to fuck him, head tipping back on the pillow, so that Bodie had to move faster, harder, _had to_ …

He came with a gasp of his own, with Doyle’s name on his lips, wanting nothing else ever but the feel of the man under him and around him and… _sleep_.

o0o

When next Bodie woke, there was nothing but empty space beside him, the ghost of a warmth, and the sound of running water in the bathroom. He took a deep breath, rubbed a hand over his face, and glanced at the clock beside the bed. Afternoon, and the world was fuzzy around the edges.

What the hell was he going to do? What _could_ he do, but ride it out?

The bathroom door opened, and Doyle emerged, a towel around his waist and another draped over his curls, drying his hair as he walked across the room so that his face was half hidden, just glimpses of it as the towel whipped this way and that, nose, chin, mouth... And then the towel was gone, and Doyle was sitting on the bed beside him, and Bodie realised he’d been staring. 

There was a smile on Doyle’s face, small, barely there, but twisting at his lips, and Bodie got ready for defence, martialled his best rejections and rebuttals. _Not bad for a one night stand_ … 

“Looks like it’s finally coming together,” Doyle said, the last thing Bodie’d expected. Did that mean Doyle had been planning… 

Very aware that he was still sprawled naked and smelling of sex across the creased white sheets, that if only he could see them his body would be marked all over with Doyle’s fingerprints, he lifted a questioning eyebrow, and twisted his own smile back, moving to lie with his hands behind his head. “Oh yeah?”

Doyle smiled properly then. “Yeah, that too. Wasn’t expecting…” he faltered briefly, then tipped his head towards the bed, “…all this. But I meant the case.”

The case. 

Maybe Doyle saw the moment his heart froze for a beat, saw it in his eyes, because he leaned forward suddenly, unexpected again, and kissed him. It felt like a kiss that should be fast, should be quick, but it dissolved between them, slowed and warmed, heat growing again, _bloody again_ , he thought distantly. He wanted to fuck again, as if he was eighteen, as if they hadn’t spent the whole night…

Doyle moaned into his mouth, even as Bodie was reaching around and under the towel, beginning to pull them together _again_ , and then Doyle was withdrawing, separating them, standing and catching the towel more firmly around him, though all that did was show how hard he was underneath it, what a bad idea it would be to stop.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, eyeing Bodie so that Bodie stayed right where he was, letting him take it all in, what he was missing. “I’ve got to meet Newbolt, I ‘aven’t got time to go back to bed…” 

But he didn’t move, stood staring at Bodie. Bodie felt a surge of… _something_ , and slid his legs to the edge of the bed, stood up and crowded Doyle backwards until he was leaning against the simwindow, outlined against a spring blue sky. Doyle wasn’t going anywhere.

“Then we’ll do it standing up,” he offered, tilting his hips to meet Doyle’s, to rub his cock against the hardness of Doyle’s under the towel, and taking his mouth in another kiss, determined and somehow angry. It melted away as he slid his hands along the back of Doyle’s thighs, displacing the towel again, letting Doyle’s arse fill his palms, his fingers holding tightly, squeezing and holding them together so that they could rub… and Doyle’s arms were around him again, and he was being kissed back, and he thrust almost gently, and again, a lazy frottage, and then Doyle was coming, and god, so was he…

The world was dim, and warm, and it smelled of shower gel and shampoo, and sex, and oddly enough it was starting to shake. Bodie opened his eyes. Doyle’s face was pressed into his shoulder, and he was laughing. 

Bodie pulled back properly, lifted his eyebrow again in mute enquiry, which seemed to increase Doyle’s mirth, so that in the end Bodie gave in and grinned back, gave in to the infection of it all, that feeling of having had a good dream rushing back to him all over again.

“ _What_?” he asked at last, “It’s not supposed to be funny, you know.”

“Nah, it’s not…” Doyle pushed Bodie backwards a little, tightened his arms around Bodie’s waist in a quick hug, and kissed him on his neck, then shoved him even further away and held out a hand as if to ward him off. “Feels like being a teenager again, an’ I remember how much trouble that got me into. I’m gonna be late.” He looked down at himself, naked once more, towel on the floor behind him. “An’ I need to wash again.” He grasped Bodie’s arm as he stepped past him, squeezing it gently, and then he vanished into the bathroom again. 

Bodie stood there for a moment, then he took a deep breath and followed him, stopped in the doorway to watch Doyle’s shadow in the shower cubicle as it twisted quickly under the water, emerged again and reached for yet another towel, catching sight of Bodie as he did so.

“You stay right where you are,” he said, but there was a smile twisting at his lips again, and… and there was a _look_ in his eye.

Or was he just imagining that, seeing what he wanted to see?

“Don’t go to Newbolt’s,” Bodie said abruptly, barely knowing he was going to say it, knowing that he shouldn’t, he couldn’t…

Doyle’s face hardened, though his words were soft enough. “I’ve got to mate - we’ve come this far.” He finished drying himself, stepped past Bodie back into the bedroom and started gathering his clothes together.

Bodie watched him.

“We need something more solid on ‘im, proof that he knows Krivas, or your blokes last night, or Renton…” Doyle picked up the Skin, stood looking at it, a harmless drapery of black and silver in his hand.

Bodie looked at it too, then back to Doyle, patched here and there in brown and yellow and dull purple, bruised. His fingerprints had been washed away, his come and his kisses and any sign that he’d touched him, but Newbolt was still all over him.

Back to work. 

“What’ve you got on today, then?” Doyle was asking, and Bodie blinked, looked up and met his gaze. 

“Bodie…”

Doyle was as reluctant as he was.

“Krivas wants me to fly him up north somewhere, special mission he called it.”

“Might be connected?”

Bodie shook his head, let reality flood back. “Doubt it. Probably the Russian gig, he’s booked a flyer for long distance.”

“Maybe you can get him talking, see if…”

“I know how to do my job, Doyle.”

“Yeah.” Doyle was still holding the Skin in his hand as if it was a barrier between them. He flicked it out, turned it around, and began putting it on. “I know.”

Bodie waited until he was almost encased in it, had just the facepiece to smooth on, and then he stepped forward, put an arm around him and pulled him into a hug. Doyle tensed, then relaxed against him, feeling strange in Bodie’s arms, in the Skin.

They had to meet again tonight. For work.

“Take a D and D on you, shall I?” he said, almost into Doyle’s ear, felt Doyle take a deep breath against him.

“Nah,” he said back, pulling away, so that Bodie wondered again if he’d got it all wrong. “Don’t need one. Got a regular date, don’t we?” He met Bodie’s eyes ruefully, tugged the facepiece into place. “Just let me know where and when.”

Bodie nodded at the too-shiny Doyle, grinned suddenly and reached out, ruffling still-damp curls, then he turned to go and take his own turn in the shower, letting the water rush over him and drown out the sound of the door outside opening, and closing.

o0o

The heavens were just opening as Doyle stepped outside, so that he ducked into the Tube station rather than walk, hair still wet from his second shower, let himself be sucked upwards towards the sky and bustled across the platform to the waiting shuttle. It turned out to be the Circular Line, which suited him - despite what he’d said to Bodie, there was over an hour before he was due to meet Newbolt, who’d no doubt be restless after his previous night’s session in the House. Doyle needed some space between the two of them, between Bodie’s kisses and Newbolt’s lash. He needed time to think.

The simwindow was set to a more beautiful winter than they were having, a fairytale of pastel skies and glittering frost across the city, but he stared at it, unseeing. The Skin felt tight across his bones, as if it was burrowing into him, a layer of something nasty that he might never get rid of. What if Cowley kept presenting him with assignment after assignment in it, expected him to fuck his way around London for CI5? 

A few weeks ago that might not have sounded so bad, Abri or no Abri, but now… The Tube pulled into a station, disgorged its contents, paused while the new masses poured themselves inside. Doyle slid across to the vacated corner seat, leaned back against it. 

Now there was Bodie.

o0o

The flight path Krivas gave him wasn’t set for Russia, Bodie could see that straight away. Trouble was, it didn’t seem to be set for anywhere else either, nothing more than a piece of air over the heaving North Sea, somewhere off the coast of Scotland.

He’d tried asking where they were going, but Krivas had shaken his head, looking pointedly in the direction of their three passengers in the rear compartment - grey-suited businessmen, the lot of them, complete with briefcases and an unhealthy dedication to their mobiles. Krivas had met them and ushered them into the flyer with every appearance of affability - in exchange, no doubt, for the bulky envelopes he’d been given in return. Now and then one of them would look up and glance at his watch, as if impatient for their journey to be over, so at least Krivas didn’t intend to dump him and then take the controls himself. They were going _some_ where…

Bodie resigned himself to finding out when he was told - Krivas hadn’t changed - and keeping one eye on the controls. It was a good night for flying this far north, they’d left the rain far behind them and the skies were clear. Now and then he caught a glimpse of the aurora, a pale green mist in the distance, dancing along some invisible airwaves and crackling at the electronics and radio, but mostly he was free to think his own thoughts. 

Mostly he was still thinking about Doyle.

Eventually they crossed the coastline, leaving city lights behind them, bare minutes away from their target. Krivas began to look more alert beside him, and he could hear an expectant buzz of chatter through the plexiglass. Their passengers had been here before, where ever here was. 

In front of them a light began to shine through the distance, brilliant and clear, and slap-bang in the middle of the sea. What the hell...? He could feel himself leaning forward, peering through the windscreen to make out the shape… an oilrig. One of the old oilrigs, the monsters that he remembered as tales from his schooldays, the homes of sea monsters and devils, forever consigned to the risen seas and lashing ocean storms.

Krivas was watching him, so he caught his eye briefly, looked amused. “What the hell are you up to, now?” he asked, just as a rush of landing instructions sounded in his ear. He concentrated on landing them safely, on being patient and getting them solidly on deck. 

A welcoming party of what looked like mechas - sex mechas at that - strode staunch against the buffeting winds to the rear door, and opened it, helping their passengers out, greeting them like long-lost friends. There was a kind of carpet spread across to the flyer zone, a transport bug to collect them and roll them the few hundred metres to a door outlined in brilliant pink neon, glaring and inviting both, like something from Rouge City.

Krivas had unstrapped himself and opened his own door, so Bodie began to do the same. At least it didn’t look desperate - no armed guard, no freelance Hounds lurking in corners, no real guard dogs either, and who used pink neon if there wasn’t a bar involved? 

Before he could climb out, Krivas grabbed his arm. “What name do you want?” he asked, and Bodie frowned, covered it by sniffing, trying to look thoughtful. Not completely clean then, if they were going in with pseuds, but then he hadn’t been expecting _clean_. 

He shrugged. “Bentley,” he said at random from the half dozen he’d used before, “David Bentley.”

“Fine,” Krivas nodded. “And here I am known as Renton - just Renton.”

“Right then,” Bodie nodded back. “Now I’m hoping you’ve got something decent to drink in there - I could murder a pint.”

Krivas’ eyes narrowed, and he gestured towards the door. “Come on - we’ve got everything you could ever want.” He smiled suddenly, a flash of tiny, sharp teeth in the half-light that reached them from the main building. “I’ll show you around. There are perks for the pilots.”

Bodie climbed out, secured the flyer and followed him across the deck, thoughts crashing loudly around his head like the waves he could hear crashing around the great legs that stretched way down into the deeps.

Renton.

Bloody hell.

o0o

_Time was running out_ , Doyle thought, absently avoiding the doorman’s eye, and emerging into the early morning air. He was getting nothing from Newbolt except a deeper dislike for his habits and more bruises. If Newbolt was planning to take over another country, he was hiding it well. He found himself yawning, looking around with gritted eyes and bad temper at the bright young suits who were already bustling in to work, keen to get on with whatever they’d left undone the night before. It’d be nice, he thought, to see dawn from the right side again, for a change - as a prelude to going out for a run around the park, or to a leisurely breakfast, an ordinary day, and then his own bed, to sleep, in the dark, through the night.

Or maybe not to sleep the whole time.

What would it be like to see Bodie first thing in the morning, to be awake with him through the day instead of just going to bed, to know he’d see sunlight on that face, in those eyes, and that by the time the sun was setting they’d be looking forward to an ordinary dark night, to sex and sleep?

He was looking forward to sex and sleep with Bodie now. London was almost pulsing around him - it had been a long night. If Newbolt was doing genuinely useful work during the day as well as spending nights like that, maybe they should be getting his bloodchem checked. 

Doyle yawned again, glanced at his mobile. There was no hotel from Bodie yet, so he found one far enough away to charge a reasonable fee, not so far that he’d need the Tube to get there, made the booking, and sent Bodie the details, and then dialled Cowley’s number.

“Alpha.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Ah - Doyle, good. You’re sure it was Johnson you saw the other night?”

“Positive,” he said, though he felt his heart drop as he walked. “No ident on film then?”

“Whatever they’re using as a scrambler, it’s new - we couldn’t get anything. The other man was Kennett Younger, a minor ruffian on the fringes of mercenary activity, but we have other confirmed sightings of him with Krivas. He’s not the issue. We need Johnson - he’s the link, he must be. I’m sending you his last known address. I’ve put a team on constant watch.”

“Bodie was off to Russia with Krivas today - maybe he’ll get something there.”

“Aye - maybe. But where ever they went today it wasn’t Russia, at least not by any known flight path. Tell him to report in as soon as you see him. And get me Johnson!”

The line ended abruptly, and Doyle frowned at the address that appeared via his scrambler. What the hell was he supposed to do about Johnson? Join the stakeout until he turned up, and then tail the man himself? Safer than Bodie trying it, he supposed. 

He turned at last into Bucannon Street, spotted the _Golden Apple_ halfway along, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was so tired he could sleep for a week…

Bodie hadn’t checked in yet, so he flirted idly with the bloke on reception in hope of an upgrade, and took the lift up to the fourth floor. The room itself was small but tidy, and all he cared about was the shower and the bed. The shower would have to wait until Bodie got there, but the bed beckoned, and he heeled off his shoes, let his jacket fall on the floor, and lay down, for just a minute…

o0o

He woke with a start to the sound of a door slamming along the corridor, the rattle of a servemecha. He was too warm, and the Skin felt tight, pricklish where he’d been sleeping on it. He turned restlessly onto his side, lifted a lazy hand to read his watch.

 _Three o’clock_.

 _Fuck!_ Where the hell was Bodie? He sat up, startled alert, and checked his messages. Nothing. He re-sent the D and D booking address, then stood up and stretched, pacing the dozen spare feet from one end of the room to the other. No wonder the Skin was starting to feel tight - there was barely more than an hour before his twenty four were up, before the Skin bonded more firmly to him, before…

There was the tag. The skin tag in the belly button - if Bodie didn’t turn up he could always use that, get himself back to the lab. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax. He’d give it twenty minutes, then go find Patricks.

But where the hell was Bodie?

o0o

“…the latest tactics, and the best weapons available,” Krivas boasted, sweeping an arm around the training field. In one corner a group of men were lined up outside a killing hut, far enough away that Bodie could barely hear the gunfire inside. The next corner was a firing range, and even from here it was obvious that the laser sights being used were incredibly accurate - either that or Krivas had the cream of the world’s target shooters at play right this minute. Above them, men dangled and swung from a rope course, with neither fear of the fall nor apparent effort.

“Could have done with that lot in Mid-Afric.” Bodie nodded up at them. “How long they been training?”

“They parkour every day for a year before we send them anywhere.” Krivas sounded satisfied - smug even, the proud benefactor. Speaking of which…

“So how’d you pay for this little lot, then?” he asked. “You never saved any more than the rest of us when I knew you.”

“Not a credit of it is from me,” Krivas said, watching as one of the trainees above reached the final platform, jumped twenty feet at a time down a series of outcrops in the wall of the rig, and when he reached the bottom jogged back to start the course again. “It’s fully funded - and so is that beer you wanted. Shall we?” He gestured to the bug that had brought them through three levels of the most sophisticated training areas that Bodie had ever seen.

“So who funds it, then?”

Krivas took the wheel, and set them trundling across the floor. “Patience, Bodie - you’ll see in just a moment. You remember our passengers?”

“What, the suits? They’re not political!”

“No, they’re not - but they also don’t care what they’re paying for, as long as they are safe to enjoy their own kind of distractions.” The bug reached another door topped by a neon pink sign. “Come on - I’ll show you the second floor.”

It was immediately clear that the second floor had nothing to do with the men training outside. The corridor inside was thickly carpeted, and lit bright, the walls a delicate shade of pale lilac, the year’s most popular colour. Old-fashioned uplights reflected from the ceiling, and a sultry perfume hung thick around them. Bodie paused to take it all in - fourteen rooms, seven on either side, another exit at the other end. Krivas wandered over to a door, apparently at random, glanced through a circular glass window and dismissed whatever he saw. He moved further along to a second door, watched avidly for a moment and then smirked and beckoned to Bodie.

“You might enjoy this one,” he said, turning his own eyes back to the room, and running a hand restlessly over his own crotch.

Bodie peered through the glass, into dim light on red walls, frowning at the shapes and shadows. There was a bed of course, and on the bed one of the men they’d flown in was sitting, sprawled against the headboard, having his cock sucked by a love mecha. One hand was stretched out to fondle another, and his other was shoving a large dildo in and out of the mecha who was pleasuring him. He looked alternately from one to the other mecha, and then to the wall. What was he…? 

Bodie blinked. Tied spreadeagled around the wall were other love mechas, all engage in various acts of exposing themselves, over and over again.

He looked quizzically at Krivas. It was sordid, but nothing you wouldn’t find in Rouge City or any of the more dubious cathouses in the Old Town. “That lot fund your boys out there?”

Krivas laughed out loud at that, a half-bitten off sound, harsh in the quiet of the corridor. “That lot fund the beer,” he said. “No, twice a month we bring in the real thing, and _that_ draws the money - the very top money, Bodie, and the men who don’t want anyone to know what they do when they’re not at home with their families.”

 _The real thing…_? “And they don’t know you’ve got an army training right under their noses?”

“Of course they know.” Krivas turned and led him up the long corridor. Bodie glanced in the rooms as they passed, and Krivas let him. “It’s part of what they pay for - the ultimate security.”

“Bit small-league for you, isn’t it?” he asked. He’d always got most out of Krivas by poking him. “Rich man’s pimp?”

To his surprise, Krivas just laughed again. “You never did understand the subtleties, Bodie. Sex sells - but it buys, too. I want a vote in the House just so? I can do it. I want a certain advert across the infoweb? Done.”

Bodie’s mind was racing. Two sessions a month, at least fourteen rooms, how many politicos and influentials did Krivas have in his pocket? And _the real thing_? If that was true, then why was no one out there talking? Why hadn’t there been even a whisper of a rumour?

They passed through yet another pinkly-lit door, this one leading to a bar, a few people at scattered tables, most of them with love mechas, but quiet. A long window looked out on the landing pad, lights dim and moody across the stretch of tarmac, making the blackness beyond seem deeper, the end of their world. Krivas nodded at the servemecha, which began to pull pints from the taps. Bodie watched the foam rise in the glasses. “Still got your eye on that island, then?” 

“King Krivas has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Krivas smiled. “But you can get trapped on an island. All that water. You may have been right all along - there’s a lot to be said for civilisation. Especially when you control it.”

Bodie took the proffered pint, supped thoughtfully for a moment - Old Kentish, a premier brand, of course - and then looked sideways at Krivas. “Done alright for yourself.”

“I have.” That was Krivas, no false modesty. “And I can always use good men. You were always good.”

“You want me to do - what?”

Krivas shrugged. “My head of security is going to have an accident in a few days.”

“Making free with the goods, was he?”

“Making free with the customers. It turned out she was more brawn than brain. You wouldn’t make that mistake, not with your background.”

He pretended to think about it - but not for so long that Krivas decided he was being played. “What are you offering to keep me on the straight, then?”

“Let us begin with something better than your _beer_.” Krivas waved at the servemecha again. “Brandy for my colleague!”

o0o

Doyle was about to leave, reaching to scan for exit when he heard running footsteps down the hotel corridor, and so he’d drawn his knife and was standing behind the door when it burst open.

He took a breath, sheathed his blade, and decided killing the bastard could wait.

“Doyle?” Bodie spun at the soft sound of steel sliding into steel. “You’re still wearing it…?” 

“Of course I’m still wearing it, you moron - you weren’t here to… _oi_! Watch the arm!” Bodie’s grip was fierce, an echo of the look in his eyes, and he dragged Doyle closer to him with one hand, dug into a pocket with the other. He had to let him go to undo the tube of gel, unusually clumsy as he tried to unscrew the cap fast, and Doyle pursed his lips on what he’d been about to say, turned around before Bodie could push him to do it, and waited for the slide of fingers down his back. When it came, it felt more sluggish than normal, as if the Skin was peeling away only reluctantly, and he found himself tugging it off with more haste than ever before. It felt tacky, pulling at his own flesh as he stripped it away. Bodie reached out to help, and together they finally freed him of it, letting it drop to the floor in a black and silver puddle.

Doyle stared at it for a moment, looked up to find Bodie doing the same, and then their eyes met. It was Doyle who reached out this time, pulling Bodie to him and kissing him for the frantic look on his face when he arrived, and for the fear that lingered yet in his eyes. Every inch of Bodie felt alive as they kissed, electric against his own skin, and Doyle reached down to undo his trousers even as Bodie pushed him back towards the wall, where they rutted hard against each other, skin on skin on heat and hardness and need, until they came in gasps of air that were almost cries, and stilled, and then just held each other up.

Bodie moved eventually, but only to the bed in the corner of the room, pulling Doyle with him. They slid under the duvet, tugging it around them until they lay close, entwined together, and cocooned in the warmth and comfort of it.

The moment stretched. “Alright?” Doyle asked at last, casually, and then found himself laughing. Underneath him, Bodie began to shake, and then he was giggling, and laughing as well, and the last of the tension drained from them.

“What the fuck kept you?” Doyle asked when he could speak again. “You cut it a bit fine, mate!”

“Got here as fast as I could. Got held up.” Bodie said, and his arms tightened again around Doyle. “I need to call Cowley,” he added, though he didn’t move.

“Bodie! What happened?”

“I found Renton - _and_ he made me a partner in his little enterprise. Well - employee.”

“So it’s not Krivas then?” Doyle leaned up on an elbow, looked down at Bodie as he spoke. 

Bodie was shaking his head.

“So it _is_ Krivas?”

“You’re gonna love this,” Bodie said. “Renton _is_ Krivas. He’s using it as a codename for his little scam.”

“No wonder we couldn’t find him.”

“Yeah - and his scam isn’t so little. He’s not after the Southern Confederates, he’s got his eye on bigger fish here at home.”

“Newbolt…”?

“A cog in the machinery.” Bodie raised an eyebrow. “A very small cog, it turns out.”

Doyle listened, frowning, as Bodie told him where he’d been and what he’d been doing - tried to ignore the fact that he’d been with a love mecha for half the night, as a reward and a temptation from Krivas.

“So they bring in real hookers for these sessions,” Doyle said at last. “So what? That’s not illegal - why the secrecy?”

“They’re not hookers.” Bodie looked grim. “They’re kids picked up from the street - mostly rain-dodgers, so no one’ll come looking for them, but not always. You remember that soap star who went missing a few months ago?”

“Cara Taitley?” It had made a splash in the news blogs, a minor but rising star who was using her body to get to the top, suddenly gone. “She didn’t turn up to work one day,” he remembered. “Never seen again.” 

“That’s right. One of the _clients_ had a yen on for her - paid nearly a million credits.”

Doyle whistled, low. “And she’s still there?” 

But Bodie was shaking his head again. “They don’t bring them back. When they’re done with ‘em they go over the side.” He looked away briefly. “What’s left of them.”

“Christ…”

“Yeah.” Bodie took a deep breath, then sat up and reached for his trousers, pulled his mobile from a pocket. “I’ll call Cowley. At least you won’t have to see Newbolt again.”

For a moment, for just a moment, relief washed through Doyle like cool, clear water - and then it froze in place. “You didn’t have a recorder with you,” he said, matter-of-factly, and waited for Bodie to look at him. “And we haven’t got any evidence that Newbolt’s involved.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Bodie’s face had hardened. “We knock out Krivas’s rig and Newbolt’s got nowhere to go and do his nasty. And Krivas finally gets his.”

“No. He’s managed just fine without Krivas so far.” He glanced down at the almost permanent bruises around his wrists, flexed his back so that the skin pulled there too, a reminder. “Getting Krivas isn’t enough - I want Newbolt.”

“You can’t go back…”

“We need the _evidence_ , Bodie! Look, call Cowley - now we know what’s going on, I can draw Newbolt out, we can set something up. It’ll be alright.”

“You’re not telling me… Afternoon, sir.” With a final glare, Bodie turned his attention to his phone, began the formal report of his information, and Doyle lay back on the pillows, running a hand through his hair, and half-listening, trying to think. Cowley would come up with something, he was sure - but how far would he have to let Newbolt go before the plan kicked in?

o0o

Bodie kept his flyer at a careful distance from the Minister’s own transport, hidden behind at least two other vehicles at all times, and now and then he flicked on the colour tint, so that his energy tiles tilted in one direction or another, making him darker or lighter as the ambient light flowed around him. It was expensive to use, draining the fuel cells each time he did it - and on this occasion he didn’t care in the least. Doyle was in Newbolt’s flyer, and they were headed to the Minister’s current private country residence, far away from the bustle and safety of town.

Anything could happen in the country, in the quiet enclaves of the rich and famous and powerful. Newbolt hadn’t brought Doyle anywhere near the place until now, though Doyle hadn’t read anything into it, and Bodie frowned as he tried yet again to work out why. A change of location had been Doyle’s idea to keep the Minister interested, to introduce the idea of escape, and one that Newbolt had agreed to readily enough - and then derailed all Doyle’s exotic suggestions and told him only that he fancied some _at home_ time, whatever that meant. Government mandarins didn’t have permanent residences, they were rewarded with them when they resigned their service, and there was no reason this place should mean anything more to Newbolt than his other houses and flats. Unless he had something there that he couldn’t risk using often - it was what Bodie returned to, time and again. Nothing as extreme as on the oilrig, or he wouldn’t go out there, but something…

Bodie found himself thinking of some of the darker corners at the Flesh Fairs, where love mechas could be reduced to their specifics, and used until they fell apart. It had never appealed to him, but he’d never thought of it as more than another, albeit fairly disgusting, way to get rid of worthless metal. Now it worried at him, nagged at him, kept him cautious on Newbolt’s tail.

Cowley hadn’t helped - his focus was Johnson, still trying to make that link between Newbolt and Krivas, and he didn’t have much sympathy for Bodie’s worries. Doyle’s vital signs were on constant record via the datacatch, he was fit and healthy, and, Cowley reminded him impatiently, probably safer while he was wearing the Skin than Bodie was. 

It wouldn’t stop him feeling pain. Wouldn’t stop Newbolt touching him.

The flyer ahead slowed as they approached the gates to Newbolt’s estate, and Bodie snapped on the snag device on the seat beside him, drove past the entrance, and kept going until he was around a curve in the flyway, then swooped into the return lane, changed his tiles again, and headed back. Everything was quiet, the gates closed, the electric field over the place reading secure. 

If this didn’t work… It would work. He coded the readings from the snag into his flyer, waited impatiently for them to match the readings from the field, and then aimed for a space just to the side of the gates, where a row of tall bushes would hopefully protect his entry from less technical security, such as prying eyes. He took a deep breath, and accelerated straight towards the field.

Entry was underwhelming - not even an extra buzz of current - but he was safely inside, his flyer hovering easily, and in just enough space between the wall and the bushes to be concealed. He opened the door wide enough to squeeze through, aware of the full moon high in the sky and looming brightly over the world, giving more light than he would have liked. There was cover from the bushes and trees around most of the perimeter, but wide stretches of empty lawn between the bushes and the house. He’d have to go around and hope that there would be outbuildings of some kind to give him cover. He glanced around once more, poised to move - all was still, the windows on this side of the house dark.

His mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he started, then crouched back into the shadows and pulled it out. It could be Jen, it could be Sarah, it could be Doyle calling for help.

It was George Cowley.

“Where are you, man?”

“Following a lead, sir,” he said, wincing and hoping Cowley hadn’t pulled up a map on his number. 

“Drop it,” Cowley said briefly. “I need you back here.”

“News?”

“Aye - we’ve a lead connecting Johnson to the murder of his girlfriend, and to another woman associated with Newbolt. I want you to follow it up - I’m filing a flight plan for you to Manhattan.”

 _Manhattan?_ “That’s halfway to the Americas!”

“I’m aware of its location, Bodie. You’d better hurry then, hadn’t you?”

“Doyle…”

“Is with Newbolt as we speak, I know. But you can manage this on your own, it’s a simple pick up.”

“Yes, sir.” Except he’d risk Cowley’s wrath rather than leave Doyle out here on his own. “On my way, sir.”

He could almost hear a _snap_ as the call ended, and stared at the screen for a moment before shoving it deep into his pocket again, and starting to move around the edge of the property. The house was set further back from the front than from either side or the rear, and as he followed the wall around, he came closer to the building. There were lights on at the back of the house, on the ground floor and one each on the first and the second floors, and voices loud from what he assumed was a kitchen or some kind of servants quarters. Would the Minister use mecha or orga at his house in the country? Didn’t matter much, he didn’t want to meet anyone. 

A series of greenhouses stretched around the back garden - naturally the Minister would eat fresh - and Bodie made his way carefully from one to another, until he was close enough to run four steps to the side of the building. It was too cold in December for open windows, but his skeleton keys made short work of their digital locks, and then he was inside a dark room, a library, lined floor to ceiling with books on shelves, and scattered with armchairs. There was a desk at one end, and he thought briefly about searching it, deciding with relief that he didn’t have time. Anyway, if Cowley’s lead was good, he didn’t need to. He just had to find Doyle.

The bedrooms were probably upstairs, and he slunk carefully along walls and corridors and bannisters in the shadows. The place was almost entirely in moonlit darkness, the lights presumably all inside rooms, but he took care anyway. In this sort of place, the slightest noise could bring someone out, and he had no intention of explaining to Cowley why his lead had brought him right to the lion’s den.

The room on the first floor with the light on was simply a bathroom, empty and glaring, and so he carried on even more carefully to the second floor. There was no sound - no shouts or slaps or cracking whips, and surely Newbolt hadn’t had time to finish Doyle off yet. Besides - Doyle wouldn’t give up without a fight if it came to that, Bodie was sure of it.

He opened door after door, carefully, just far enough to see that the rooms were in darkness, and it wasn’t until he reached the last room in the hallway that he was rewarded by a chink of light. No movement though, and no sound… He took a chance, pushed the door open far enough to look past, and peered around.

Doyle’s eyes glared back at him from the opposite wall, glittering above a wide strip of silver tape across his mouth. His hands were cuffed to metal rails on the wall, his legs spread-eagled and feet cuffed in the same way. His clothing was undone, but he looked otherwise intact, and Bodie gave him a bright grin, then held a finger to his mouth, and pulled out his mobile. The snag device had pulled all the codes and numbers in the house, and he keyed in a message, then coded it to voice and sent it through the ether, aware of Doyle’s angry stare the whole time.

A door slammed downstairs, and Bodie stepped quickly to the far side of the bed, sliding underneath just as the door opened and Newbolt strode into the room.

“Well Ray, our plans have been interrupted again. Had you chosen your toy yet? Decided which one it should be? I thought perhaps the crop, because it makes such a satisfying sound, but I must admit that I was hoping for the cat. But it will have to wait - the House has been called.”

A slap of flesh on flesh, and then heavy breathing, and Bodie gritted his teeth. 

“Let yourself out - call a flyer on my account and take a booking for tomorrow night.”

Footsteps again, and then he was gone. Bodie waited until the whine of a flyer could be heard outside, and then he rolled out, dusting himself down. Doyle was uncuffed now, leaning against the wall, clothes straightened, and arms crossed over his chest. He’d taken the gag off.

“Would you like to tell me…?” he began, spitting fury, and Bodie cut him off.

“Cowley called,” he said. “He wants us in HQ - we’re off to Manhattan on a pick up. Something to do with Johnson.”

Doyle glared suspiciously at him, then nodded him at the door, and followed close behind as they left the Minister’s house.

o0o

There was something up with Bodie, Doyle thought, as they flew back to town, something he wasn’t talking about. Cowley’s lead was good news, but Bodie was almost too happy about it - wittering away about the last time he’d flown to the Americas, and about this flyer and that flyer, and whether it was likely to be Johnson himself that they were collecting. Doyle didn’t bother trying to get a word in edgewise, nodding and making the right noises at the right places, and no more, but only half his attention was on the route, and the rest was watching his partner.

Bodie took them straight to CI5, where Cowley had given them all the clearance they needed to be whisked from the flypark to his office. His assistant showed them through with a smile, as if this was nothing more than an ordinary business meeting, and Doyle was perhaps no more than he appeared to be - a mecha.

“Doyle.” Cowley frowned at him, glanced at Bodie, and then back. “I thought you were booked with Newbolt tonight?”

“Er… Yes sir. He was called to the House. I’m booked again tomorrow.” He very carefully didn’t look at Bodie, but he felt him, attention-straight and tense beside him.

“Hmmn.” Cowley tapped a file of papers against his hand for a moment, and Doyle waited impatiently. “Well, you’re here now,” he finally said, “And I daresay Bodie would appreciate some company.” Dry as dry.

“Who’re we picking up, sir?” Bodie asked quickly, so that the corner of Cowley’s mouth twitched, and Doyle frowned. What was the joke?

“A witness to Samantha Bevin’s murder - someone who saw Saul Johnson kill the girl. A mecha - Gigolo Joe, a sophisticated model. One of your kind, Doyle.” Cowley’s gaze flicked to him, and there was a definite twinkle in his eye. Who would have thought the old man had a sense of humour? “A love mecha.”

Doyle rolled his eyes. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Hang on - what’s a love mecha doing in the Drowned City?”

“He’s in the company of an even more sophisticated model - a prototype by Cybertronics, based in the New Jersey Islands, based on a child. For some reason, the pair made their way to Rouge City, and then stole an amphibicopter. We think David is trying to return to his maker, Allen Hobby. We’re not sure why Joe seems to have decided to accompany him.”

“Gone rogue?” Bodie suggested. “He should have turned himself in when he witnessed the murder.”

“Assuming he did,” Doyle interrupted. “Are you sure he saw it?”

“We know he had a regular appointment with Bevins, and that he checked into the hotel on time. We also know he left the hotel before the appointment was scheduled to end - and that his operating tag was found cut from his collar.”

“Told you,” Bodie said. “Gone rogue.”

Perhaps…” Cowley sounded thoughtful.

“He ditched his tag!”

“And stole a copter,” Doyle agreed. “So we go and pick him up.”

“Yes. I want to find out what he knows. There’s an amphibicopter with the necessary equipment waiting for you in the pool. You’ll find the flight path set. And here.” He reached into a drawer, and drew out a datadock, gestured at them impatiently when they hesitated. “Your phones - you may need clearance ident, and we don’t have time to chip you. You’ll also maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary, and use call-signs rather than names. Bodie - you’re assigned as 3.7. Doyle - 4.5.” He scanned the data into their phones. “Well get on with it, then! You haven’t got all night!”

The copter waiting for them was high-spec, so that they both eyed it appreciatively as they typed in their codes for the sign-out. Bodie clearly assumed that he would be the one piloting it, so Doyle made a point of beating him to the flight seat and scanning his phone to the comms, raising his own eyebrow to Bodie’s. 

“Come on, Bodie - we ‘aven’t got all day, you know.”

Bodie looked sideways and dubiously at him. “Alright - but I get return flight,” he finally said. He grinned suddenly. “Of course I suppose it looks better if my mecha does the donkey work on the way out.” He’d relaxed at some point, Doyle thought, once they’d left Cowley’s office, anyway.

“You…” Doyle was acutely aware that he hadn’t de-Skinned. There was no particular reason he should - if things went smoothly they’d be back well inside the safety parameters, and Bodie was right beside him in any case. It tingled around him - at least he wouldn’t fall asleep at the controls - but he had a feeling that some of that electricity was still Bodie.

They cleared the city, avoided the Bristol Channel when the geocheck reported strong pirate activity, and flew along the French coast instead, before dropping down and across to open waters. From there it was nothing but sea and sky, and eventually Doyle took them up above the cloud layer, to the soft blue sky and shining sun of the dawn behind them. The air was too thin over the ocean to climb high with the chopper blades, and now and then they cut through mists and strips of cloud, but the sun brought him a kind of wakeful energy, and a kind of peace. He thought about the crowds behind them, setting off to an ordinary day’s work, and thought that, despite everything, for now it was good to be here instead, together in the emptiness with Bodie.

When they got closer, Bodie began telling ghost stories, legends about great golden lions, weeping for the ghosts of the city that once was, and about giant women who flew around the towers of the drowned. Doyle countered with cynical looks, and retaliated with more practical tales he’d heard about the place, scrapers crashing dramatically into the sea and sending their waves as far as Ireland.

“And this Hobby bloke lives there,” Bodie said at last. “What does that make him, I wonder?”

“A right nutter,” Doyle said, decidedly. It was one thing to cling onto the scrapers and bridges of Old London, communities of people, no matter how tenuous, but Manhattan was so far gone, anything still habitable so far from rescue should it be needed, that Hobby must be the only person there. He couldn’t be entirely sane, genius or not.

After a couple of hours, he dropped them back below the clouds, and they scanned the horizon for the first glimpses of the city. They came darkly, a skeleton of spires and jagged shapes on the horizon, that gradually resolved into buildings and towers. They passed a great hand, rising from the waters, holding a flaming torch, ducked around concrete and metal and broken girders. 

“Definitely mad,” Bodie said, leaning forward in his seat, eyes tracking the movement of wind and waves. 

It felt as if they were the only things alive for a thousand miles, for all Doyle knew there were island states within only a hundred. No wonder it had been so completely abandoned - it felt… wrong, somehow. Worse than anywhere back home, grey and grim, where once people had lived, loved, laughed and cried.

The bright line on their tracker drew them on, ever toward the stolen amphibicopter, and finally towards a solid building gridded with windows, and guarded by three enormous golden lions, water gushing from their mouths to fall, in a kind of beauty, back into the risen sea. They looked at each other, Bodie’s tales still vivid, smiled wryly.

“There!”

Doyle set the controls to hover, followed Bodie’s pointed finger. And there it was. There was the amphibicopter, and there with it, two figures. The taller was recognisably Gigolo Joe, a perfect match for the scan stats. He was crouched at the side of the vehicle, seemed to be listening intently to the boy mecha sitting inside.

“Take them,” Bodie suggested, and Doyle nodded briefly, matched the electromagnet to Joe’s specifics, and dropped it from the belly of their craft, feeling the slight resistance as the copter adjusted its flight to the extra pull. 

“He doesn’t want to come,” he said, trying to watch dispassionately. _Just a mecha_ he told himself, it wasn’t real reluctance. But Joe was grasping the edge of the amphibicopter, even as his body started to lift. When the magnet made contact, the audio cut in. 

“Goodbye, David. When you become a real boy, remember me to the ladies when you grow up.” A pause, and then a strange kind of hope and certainty. “I _am_.”

Doyle frowned. “ _I am_? Bit abstract, innit.” He glanced at Bodie as they reeled Joe in. “Tell me again they’re no more than nuts and bolts and datachips.”

“ _Doyle…_ What the hell?”

As if Joe had somehow released it, the amphibicopter with the boy mecha was sinking downwards, submerging into the dark, slate grey, waters. It bubbled its oxygen away, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.

“Well, Cowley only wants Joe,” Bodie said at last. “The boy’s got nothing to do with it anyway.”

“Yeah…” It was true, he knew it was true, and yet the face that had stared momentarily up at Joe… It had been a very real face, the face of a boy.

“Come on Doyle - wind him in, shove over, and let’s get out of here.”

They’d done what they came for, they were a step closer to stopping Newbolt for good - his penchants, his incidental politics, the role he played in Krivas’s grand scheme. The boy was a mecha, and whatever that meant, he was gone.

o0o

The sun burned bright and hot above the cloud as they headed back. It shone across the waves, a straight path for them to aim for, ever east.

“We fuck it all up, don’t we?” Doyle said beside him. 

“You what?” Bodie glanced through the dim light of the cockpit at him. Doyle had been melancholy since they’d picked up Joe, when he should have been celebrating. “All what?”

“Everything…” Doyle swept an all encompassing hand towards the world outside the plexiglass. “Did you know people walked on the moon, once?”

“Every kid knows that. What about it?”

“My teacher said it was a myth, like Icarus flying to the sun - but I looked it up in the Histories, and it’s true. We got all the way up there, and we walked on the moon, and then we just stopped going.”

“Money,” Bodie said, knowingly. 

“Money,” Doyle confirmed. “And jealousy and greed and fighting. And then we flooded the world and now we’re stuck down here. Serves us right.”

“Ah come on, it’s not so bad here, is it?” He locked the stick - the copter’d fly just as straight on autopilot - and looked properly at Doyle, willing him to look back. After a moment Doyle did, and Bodie raised an eyebrow at him. They’d have the op wrapped up in a day or two - maybe Cowley had already raided the rig, and they could interrogate Joe about Newbolt and then go home, work out where they’d go from here. Life was suddenly pretty good.

“What about him?” Doyle pointed a thumb back at Gigolo Joe as if he’d read Bodie’s mind. “Wanna bet he’s in for some bad times?”

“He isn’t _in for_ anything, Doyle. He’s a mecha, just bits of metal and fibre and plastic. And yeah - datachips, lots of datachips.”

Doyle shook his head. “I don’t believe that. He’s not _just_ anything - not any more he’s not. You heard ‘im. We made them too well, we set them going and made them to learn, and now we’re scared of what they’ve learned and we tear ‘em apart at flesh fairs under the moon.”

“Look, they’re mecha, we’re orga…”

“We might be orga, but the flesh fairs aren’t _human_ \- you tell me they’re more human than one mecha looking after another one!” Doyle’s eyes were hard and hurt at the same time, flashing at some injustice that he was seeing. “They _are_ us, Bodie! The things we do to them, the way we treat them - that’s what makes them the same as us. We use them - we use _each other_. If we tear them apart and throw them away when we’re done with them, then what..?” His voice cracked, and he looked away from Bodie, out at the stretch of cloud below them. “I’m telling you, Bodie, it frightens me to death.”

Bodie took a breath, and after a moment he turned back to the controls. He unlocked the stick, but he kept them above the cloud, away from the leaden, colourless world below. The one thing he’d always liked about the Afric states, was the way the sun shone every day, through clear skies. It was light or it was dark, sun or shadow. Straightforward, even when you were fighting for your life. Even when you were praying for rain.

 _…because they’ll be here when we’re gone…_ He wasn’t wrong about mechas, he knew he wasn’t. But in this grey world, maybe Doyle wasn’t wrong either. “Maybe, but…” He paused.

“But what?”

“Yeah, well, Cowley’s got a job for us.”

“Losing battle. An’ what’s the end result? We catch this lot, the flesh fairs just bring up new monsters.”

He shook his head. “Then Cowley’ll have another job for us. Look…” He hated this. If Doyle had been a bird he would have reached out, touched him, but he didn’t think he quite dared. He didn’t want to fuck this thing up, whatever it was, that had grown between them. He could almost feel it, a physical thing, as if their veins and vessels were stretching between them, electric, so that they were joined, right down to the singularities. “What we do is fight it, that’s what’s important.” He looked back over his shoulder at Joe, caught Doyle’s eye again. “And we’re not losing all the battles.”

Doyle didn’t say anything this time, but he glanced back at Joe, tipped his head to one side in a shrug, and looked away again. _Maybe…_

The air prickled between again, not just electricity this time, something deeper, pulling them closer together, always closer together.

o0o

The interrogation room that they took him to was not what Joe had been led to expect. It was an ordinary room, an office, and there were no deconstructed mechas pinned to the walls, no piles of pieces and spare parts. His captors weren’t ordinary police either - no uniforms, they didn’t seem to care about his missing tag, and they looked serious, but not unkind. The one with curly hair who was _not_ a mecha, although he’d looked like one at first, had even offered him a seat, and they’d introduced themselves. Usually the only people who introduced themselves had made a booking.

“Right metal man,” the one called Bodie said grimly, “What do you know?”

“Joe,” he said with a strange dignity, “My name is not metal and it is not man, it is _Joe_.”

“Alright,” Doyle interrupted, before Bodie could advance more than a step towards him. “What do you know, _Joe_?”

Now that was more like it - now they were getting somewhere. Joe turned his head to look at Doyle, moved his eyes to range across his body.

“I know what you like,” he offered. He leaned forward, filtered his sensors to take in the essence of the man more purely. Very strong pheromones, and nearly 90% ready-to-active. He turned down his volume, turned up the variability so that his voice was low and husky - promising. “I could take you home and we could do something about all that pent-up sexual...”

Doyle withdrew from him sharply, and Joe frowned, watching him. He didn’t think he’d read the situation that badly...

“About the case, Joe. What do you know about the _case_?” Doyle asked him. 

Bodie was grinning broadly. “What were you doing all the way out at Hobby’s?”

“Looking for Blue Fairy.”

“Blue Fairy?”

“So that I could make her a real woman, and she would make David a real boy, and then all would be right with the world.” 

“David the mecha?”

Joe nodded. “He has found her, and we will just have to trust that she will be able to do her work without my attentions.”

The men looked at each other, and Bodie rolled his eyes. They didn’t believe him? “I am very good at...”

“What about Johnson?”

Saul Johnson. “I’m in _bad_ trouble...” He would be shut down. Of course, there were men and women across the British Islands and as far away as Rouge City and the Scattered States who would remember him. _Gigolo Joe, what do you know..?_ Maybe some would weep when he did not return, and he’d asked David to remember him. He _was_.

“Well that depends on whether you can help us,” Doyle was saying, and it took a moment for his synapses to catch up with each other. There was a way out, a way to stay am...

“What do you need me to do?”

“We know that Johnson murdered Samantha Bevins, but we need to know why. What happened, Joe?”

“I didn’t arrive until after he had committed the murder.”

“How do you know it was Johnson who killed her?”

Was this a trap? “Because he told her so.” 

“He told _you_ so.”

“No.” Joe could remember it clearly. “He leaned over her still body and he said - “ He paused to modulate his voice to Johnson’s. “ _Goodbye Sam, and never forget, you killed me first_ and then he left the room.” He switched his voice back. “I’m in bad trouble. But she shouldn’t have tried to blackmail him about the blackmail. She was also in bad trouble.”

“Wait - blackmail him about the blackmail? She was blackmailing Johnson?”

“What did she know?” Bodie cut in. “Why didn’t you report this?”

“I can send you a report,” Joe said brightly. If these orga caught Johnson then perhaps he could go back to his life. It had felt strange to wander without bumping into Jane or Dan or any of the other love mechas he knew. “I can send you data about the original blackmail if it would help.”

“It would help,” Bodie said.

“Do you know who this man is?” Doyle flashed an image from his phone to the table top, waited while Joe looked at it. 

He scanned it carefully. “This is Sir John Newbolt, current Minister for Overseas Intervention. Born in Southampton on the twenty sixth of January, twenty-”

“That’s right. Have you seen him before? In person?”

Joe scanned his files. “At ten-fifty-five on the fifteenth of October this year, at twelve-oh-three on the 17th of October this year, at...”

“Alright, alright,” Doyle looked impatient, “Have you ever seen him with Saul Johnson?”

“At five-twenty-one on the twentieth of October this year, at seven-ten on the twenty-fifth of October this year, on...”

“Stop!” Doyle had looked at Bodie, and Joe could tell that they said something to each other with their eyes, but he didn’t know what it was. “Have you ever seen them talking together?”

They were looking excited in the way that orga pretended they weren’t excited, so Joe decided it might be worth anticipating a true desire. It was always risky, requiring a short-cut between synapses, but it was usually worth it for the reactions of... But these men weren’t new lovers. He collated the relevant files, started to replay them. “You’re early tonight - I’m busy tonight - That makes two of us. You’ve heard from your contacts then? - They’re agreed. - The shipments will route through Plymouth on the tenth. Full operation in Russia by the thirtieth. - I thought we said five o’clock, you’re late! - Trouble in the House. - Tell me that in a year’s time and I’ll celebrate. - What does Krivas have to - “

“Stop!” Bodie said again, “Krivas?” 

“Enrico Krivas. Born seventeenth June...”

“We’ve got him!” Bodie was looking at Doyle, and there was a gleam in his eye. “Krivas and Johnson and bloody Newbolt, all three connected!”

“Yeah, but testimony from a mecha? It won’t hold in court on its own.”

“It will if we can back it up.”

“The Session - the Minister won’t miss that, and if either Krivas or Johnson is there… We arrange a bust in.”

“Tricky - he’s got good surveillance.”

“Cowley’s gotta have the pull. We can get them.”

They smiled at each other - not nicely - and turned for the door.

“Gentlemen!” Joe stood up to follow them. “You’ll be needing my further assistance?”

“Not just now.”

“Then I am allowed to leave?”

They looked at each other again, and then back at him. “Not just now.” Doyle repeated, although he’d modulated his voice, made it softer.

“You wait here,” Bodie suggested, “Nice and safe for us.”

“You do not require...”

“Standby-mode zero-one,” Doyle said, “Background data dump. Over-ride code Herbie until further notice.”

This time they did leave, and the last thing Joe saw as his optics faded to black, was Bodie’s hand on Doyle’s back, the way their eyes shone, and the way they smiled at each other.

o0o

_One more booking_ , Doyle kept telling himself - _just one more_. He could do this again because even now Cowley was gearing up CI5 to raid the rig, and because Bodie would be waiting for him after, and he’d never have to wear the bloody Skin again. If Cowley thought otherwise then he could shove it where…

“Ah, Ray. Right on time - it’s a shame, I was hoping you’d be unpunctual.” Newbolt was sitting, relaxed, on the sleek white sofa in his current city flat, and he was stroking a riding crop back and forth across his thighs. Doyle’s eyes were drawn to it, an automatic reaction that Newbolt no doubt thought the mecha had done on purpose, to show obedience. 

He reminded himself again why CI5 was worth this.

“You don’t like me to be late,” he said, almost by rote after weeks of it. “You would think I was very bad if I was late.”

“Don’t you want to be bad for me? What do you say, Ray?” The Minister gestured to his crotch.

Doyle swallowed, took the three steps between them because he had to, and dropped to his knees. Thinking about it, that was worse than doing it. “I say…”

Newbolt smiled, stopped him with a flick of his hand. “You say what I want you to say, don’t you Ray? You’re a much more _obedient_ mecha than you pretend to be - all those synapses, sparking away, clickety-click… _clickety-click_ , Ray! Not a single misfire yet, not one…”

“My synapses are guaranteed for…” Doyle began, cataloguing the room in his peripheral vision. If he had to he could knock Newbolt out, but the game would be up. They needed more on him than just a vague connection to Renton - he _wanted_ more.

“Too long,” Newbolt purred. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Come on!” He jumped to his feet, his groin momentarily in Doyle’s face, and then away, almost dancing to the door.

“Come on, where?”

“Come on, come on - I have a special treat for you! And a special treat for me - but first we have to get there.”

“Where are we going? I have a booking at…”

“Cancelled.” Newbolt smiled at him, wide and gleaming and unpleasant. “All of them cancelled! Come on, come on! You can fly us.”

“Fly us where?” Doyle repeated, trying to keep his voice even and uncurious beyond what a mecha would always ask for practicalities. _All of them cancelled?_ He needed a destination for Cowley - the sooner he had it, the sooner rescue would find him. He had a bad feeling about this.

“ _Fly us to the moon…_ “ Newbolt crooned for a moment. “To a special moon, Ray, just for us. We’ve got a session booked - a special session, and far away! Come on, come on, come on!” He lowered his voice, held out one hand for Doyle to join him, with the other he slapped the riding crop hard against the door. “It will make up for all the interruptions - I promise.”

He reached out, and found the spot behind Doyle’s ear that was a pressure pad, switched him into blind mode.

o0o

A crescent moon was rising to the east, a dim glow that barely shone on the matte finish of Krivas’s flyer, barely lit their way. While they were on the main paths, they met and crossed other flyers now and then, shining their own lights, reminding him that there were people out there who were getting on with their ordinary lives - were going home for the night, or to bars or parties or gigs. They would have sex and sleep with people who would still be alive in the morning.

“I promised I’d take you to the next one,” Krivas had said. “You should participate once before you begin work. Use it to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those you see. Use it to impress me, Bodie.”

He’d laughed it off, pretended excitement, pretended glee, wanted to hit the man, and keep hitting him. There’d been no time to warn Cowley that the session was now, was scheduled so soon after they’d got the information about it. He’d never get there in time, and they’d have to wait two more weeks for another opportunity. Two more weeks when Cowley might decide he needed Doyle right where he was, to allay suspicion.

There was no one else with them tonight, the customers would come later, by separate transport, once everything was in place. And everyone, thought Bodie - or were they there already, the street kids and frightened young things who were never going to leave again? 

The flight felt endless.

Eventually the rig came into view, from a distance nothing more than a dark mass above the heaving waters of the North Sea, but as they came closer it resolved into a ring of dim lights around the landing pad, and then a glowing path that they followed to the same door as last time - no bug now, no neon pink yet, everything waiting to be turned on.

“I’ll show you!” Krivas shouted over the howl of the wind as they crossed the pad. “The men will be boxed below by eleven, and then we turn it all on!”

“Miss all the excitement, do they?”

“We keep them well-supplied - they have nothing to complain about.” He pulled the door open, turned and looked knowingly at Bodie. “I believe they have planned their own session tonight - the Game is still a popular pastime.”

Bodie didn’t doubt it - not with the kind of men who hired themselves out to who ever was paying the most. He knew. He’d been one of them.

Then again, he’d left.

There was more activity inside, a calm bustle along the corridors as Krivas showed Bodie where this lighting system turned on, that security fence. Eventually they made their way to the bar, and Krivas gestured the servemecha for drinks, led him to a table beside the long window. As they watched, the lighting outside rose, until Bodie could practically make out the freckles on the face of a young trainee jogging quickly back to his own level. 

Krivas glanced at his watch. “He’ll be locked out if he’s not careful. Still, a youth like that will quickly find himself _part of things_. If not quite the way they sometimes hope.”

“They hope?” Bodie supped his beer, eyeing a flurry of activity by the landing pad, saw the boy slip through a door in the corner.

“Every now and then one of them decided they’d rather take part in our side of the operation than theirs,” Krivas said. “They go awol, hide themselves somewhere - and so we oblige them.”

“Give them a free ride?” Bodie suggested, but he could feel his heart heavy in his chest. He’d been a kid like that once, run away from a lousy situation and found himself in one that was only marginally better - but it had been better.

“Oh, they’re ridden alright,” Krivas said, and smirked over his moustaches. “Although I’ve had complaints that it’s a loss to their own Game.” He shrugged. “You cannot keep everyone happy.”

Bodie grunted, trying to remind himself that he’d save more people by staying calm now, no matter what he saw tonight. They would get these bastards - eventually they would get them.

Movement in the sky caught his attention, and he watched as a dark transport ship flew heavily in, hovering over the pad as it made minor adjustments, and then lurched to a touchdown.

“You should get new pilots,” he suggested. “That one couldn’t land his mother a kiss.”

Krivas snorted. “The one thing I’m short of - good pilots. We’re having to train our own.”

The transport was opening, side sliding away to reveal the passengers inside.

“Mechas?” he asked, surprised. So Krivas didn’t keep them here between sessions after all. “What was wrong with the ones you ‘ad the other day?”

“They wear out,” Krivas said carelessly. “We always require new stock.”

A flyer had followed the transport in, waited for it to land, and was now slipping into its own space, a discreet spot in the far corner. One of the bugs whizzed out to greet the arrivals, so that their feet would barely touch the outside deck, passing the mechas who were being herded towards cargo doors on the opposite side.

“Early customers?”

Krivas swallowed the last of his brandy, gestured for another, barely glancing at the flyer. “That one is always eager. They will join us in a moment. He is a lucrative contact, so we permit it.”

Bodie nodded. A politico, perhaps? Another government minister, or some tycoon business type who worked for one of the corporations, controlled half the city with their products?

“Renton! How wonderful to see you again - I am looking forward to the show tonight!”

Bodie’s heart thumped hard in his chest, and he wondered that no one could feel the pull between himself and Doyle, the desperate urge he had to leap to his feet, grab Doyle’s arm, and get them both out of there. Why he hadn’t expected Newbolt he didn’t know, but he hadn’t. He’d cocked up, and Doyle would pay for it.

“You are here for your ring-side seat, I see,” Krivas said, waving them to the table and gesturing to the servemecha. “And you brought your own… companion?”

“A new participant,” Newbolt replied, looking incuriously at Bodie. “He is most interested in the proceedings - what do you say, Ray?”

“I say thank you, Minister,” Doyle said, not looking in Bodie’s direction. “I am looking forward to the night’s pleasures.”

“Ah - and here they come!” The Minister’s shout broke across Bodie’s thoughts, and he looked up to see another transport arriving on the pad. It landed somewhat more smoothly than the last one, and Newbolt stepped close to the window, watching avidly. “You will give me first pick, I hope?” he called back to Krivas. “I need…” He turned to eye Doyle up and down, and then back to watching the transport doors open again. “…two tonight, I think. To start with.”

Krivas shrugged, but he got up to stand beside Newbolt, and so Bodie stood forward too, for a clearer view. The doors slid back, and the passengers again emerged. 

Bodie swallowed. They were humans.

o0o

Newbolt chose two of the new arrivals even as they were being marched across the landing pad - no snug bug for these young things, Doyle thought - and they may not have been children, but they weren’t far from it. It was all he could do not to turn on Newbolt then, trusting Bodie to take care of Krivas, to drop the pair of them over the side of the rig and into the unforgiving depths. But Newbolt and Krivas weren’t the only two people involved here - and they weren’t the only other people on the rig. No, he had to get as much on record as possible, make sure Cowley could sink everyone involved with it.

Although he deferred prettily enough to him, it was clear that Newbolt saw Krivas as no more than the help, and he didn’t seem to take in Bodie’s presence at all. Doyle took it in alright, appalled, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Bodie was watching him play this role, glad that Bodie was here at all. It was all coming together, and the end was in sight - as long as it wasn’t their end.

Newbolt sat down at last and drank the brandy served to him, leaving Doyle standing behind him, asking about the minutiae of the night ahead - whether there would be public as well as private play, how many of the orga had been broken to mecha, who the chef was. There would be a meal, and staged entertainment before the customers retired to their own rooms for the night, and Doyle’s eyes met Bodie’s before he could stop himself. It might be their best chance - but it would all depend on what Newbolt decided to do with him.

Other flyers began to arrive as they talked, bugs dispatched to collect their occupants, but not bringing them directly to the bar, as they had been. To settle into their rooms, perhaps, to change for dinner, as if this was somewhere civilised, just another weekend party? Eventually Newbolt stood up, and held out his hand for something - a scan key, Doyle saw with an inward frown, as Krivas handed it over. Old-fashioned security that was less centralised, more difficult to override from outside the system with phone tech. He hoped the selection of Cowley’s apps that they’d been given hidden access to were up to it.

“Come, Ray - time to go and get ready for the fun. I promised you something special, didn’t I?”

“You always keep your promises,” Doyle responded, as they swept past Bodie and out the door. Newbolt clearly knew his way around, paused now and then to greet someone they passed in the opposite direction - people in evening wear, in very expensive evening wear, some of whom Doyle recognised from the news, or from police intelligence, on either side of the security ratings. They turned into a long, carpeted corridor, and Doyle counted twenty rooms before they reached what was presumably their own, second from the other end. He noted the exits - another door like the one they’d come in, and a lift whose doors and lights remained dark and unmoving. Not working, or not required this evening?

“Home sweet home!” Newbolt said, scanning the door open and making an extravagant gesture around the room. The wall was a single, continuous curve, a circle of a room, and there was a large, sunken bed in the centre. Various benches and pieces of equipment lined the wall, and it was scattered with clips and bars and restraints. Most of the wall was a mirror.

Lovely.

Newbolt had obviously been here before too - either he’d had luggage with him that had been unpacked, or he kept a wardrobe here, because he slid open a door and began to change into fresh clothes - a variation on the white suit that Doyle had first seen him wear, this one form-fitting, the jacket less twentieth-century, a mere suggestion of fashion attached to the body. He ignored Doyle, but every now and then he would pause and turn to look at one piece of equipment or another, and smile.

Doyle wanted to rage with impatience, but at last Newbolt was finished, turned to him. “Come.” 

The others had been gathering - surely he would go and join them, surely he would leave Doyle, set him to sleep mode…

He didn’t. He pushed him back to a mirrored section of the wall, turned him to face it, and secured his arms above his head, clipped into thick cuffs, then did the same for his ankles, and stood looking at him consideringly, running a hand up and down his back. It felt like some dreadful parody of what Bodie did, trapping, not freeing, threatening. After a moment Newbolt smiled, reached around to the front of Doyle’s trousers, and undid first his belt, and then the fastenings, peeling the fabric back and sliding it down just below his arse, so that Doyle was exposed to the air. His cock, ever half-hard from the Skin, pressed against the mirror.

Doyle breathed shallowly, watched as Newbolt selected a crop from a nearby shelf of equipment, came and stood behind him, crowding him close.

“Oh Ray - what we will do tonight, you and me… I am going to dinner, and when I come back I will find you here waiting for me, waiting for me to fuck your sweet hole, and do such things as you never thought of. I will bring help, and we will have one last night.” He moved away slightly, stroked the crop across Doyle’s bared skin. “Nothing is made to last, mecha,” he said, and brought the crop down hard suddenly, so that Doyle felt it as a sharp bruising blow through the Skin. “And especially not _mechas_.”

Another blow, then Newbolt’s hands on him, punishingly hard, and then he was freed, and he heard the door slide open, and then he was alone.

He took a deep breath, settled to wait, and tried not to think of the vision he would make for Bodie when he came.

o0o

It took Bodie almost half an hour to find the updated room list and work out how to access individual rooms, and by then the customers were milling around the bar in a glittering spectacle. They were mostly men, although there were a few women, and eventually Bodie realised that mechas were being allowed in as well, love mechas in every guise and disguise, from the obvious to the outwardly prim and respectable. He circulated unobtrusively, released by Krivas to do as he would. Krivas would expect two things - that he would enjoy himself, but that above all he would be learning the patterns of such gatherings, the demands and security of them. It gave him the freedom to work his way through every customer room - and the cell rooms.

There was a level devoted entirely to supplies, just below the customer rooms. Half was taken up with a refrigeration unit and store rooms - the rest was divided into two, a cage for the mecha and a cage for the orga, divided by a few metres of floor space, and nothing else. He found the security cameras, routed them to his phone and worked in a shut off command, and watched for a few moments as the two groups shouted and taunted each other. The humans were young enough to still be aggressive, the mechas reacted defensively. There were fewer of them - perhaps the same number as currently circulated in the bar.

Only one exit to and from the cages.

A bell chimed in the bar area, and people began wandering out, towards the banquet room next door. Half a dozen dancers had already begun to writhe on the central stage, and servemechas lined the walls, ready to cater to any whim. Krivas was watching them all, directing operations, smirking and joking discreetly with this or that customer.

It had to be now.

Newbolt’s room was at the far end of the customer corridor, and Bodie hacked the security camera to reflect an empty loop, took himself cautiously down. He’d counted all the customers into the bar area, but you never knew. The master scan card opened the door easy as you like, and he slid inside, closed it again, and then just stood there, breath gone from him.

He’d expected Doyle to be tied, had expected him perhaps to be naked - he hadn’t expected to be instantly aroused and hard at the sight of Doyle’s exposed arse, crossed with sharp red marks that stood out against his skin - the Skin, he reminded himself, not Doyle. He swallowed, clenched his hands into fists to avoid the temptation to just have Doyle there and then, bound and helpless and his to do what he wanted.

Christ, he was as bad as Newbolt.

“You took your time,” Doyle said. Bodie forced his gaze upwards, to where Doyle was watching him in the mirror, met his eyes.

“Enjoying the cocktails,” he drawled in reply, because he couldn’t let Doyle see what he was really thinking. “Care to join me?”

“We need to get the humans…” Doyle began, as Bodie scanned the cuffs open with his phone.

“Yeah, I’ve found ‘em. They’re locked up together for now, but they’re scheduled to be distributed during the food - which is just starting. I’ll take you down, then go back and cover - can you get them out?”

“Of course I can get them out.” Doyle sounded almost offended. “Question is, what do I do with them after that?”

“Give me your phone - I’ve got the scan code for the transports.”

Doyle nodded, and Bodie caught respect in his eyes. He transferred the code, led the way to the door and checked the corridor. Empty, and the security still on loop. “I’ll meet you over there as soon as I can. Don’t leave without me.”

They took the stairs to the lower level, pausing to peer around corners. There was no need for a physical guard, not with a security system like this, but it wasn’t a time to take chances - especially because the only thing he could do with the cameras here was to loop them in the same way as the empty corridor, and _that_ wouldn’t hold up to more than a casual glance, if Krivas or his boys decided to make sure all was well.

The voices in the room, orga and mecha, fell to silence as soon as they opened the door. Bodie strode across to the human cage, spoke fast. “We’re getting you out of here. Do _exactly_ what we say when we say it, and you might live long enough to get home. Any questions?”

Wide eyes, but silence still.

“Alright.” He scanned the cage door open, gestured them to go and stand by the entrance. “Doyle… Doyle?”

Doyle was staring at the mecha cage, and Bodie’s heart sank. 

“Open the cage, Bodie.”

“There’s not enough room in the transport!”

“We can’t just leave them here!”

“If we let them out, there’ll be a bloodbath.” It would be worse than leaving them where they were. “ _If_ they stay quiet long enough for the rest of us to get away.”

“Then you’ll have to take them on the second transport.”

He let out a breath, met hard green eyes. 

_Fuck_. 

“Alright - but you can explain it to Cowley.”

Doyle grinned at him suddenly, winked, and turned to the mecha cage. “We’ve gotta do this in two shifts so that we can release the transports without being seen.” He tipped his head in Bodie’s direction. “He’s going to come back for you, and same rules apply - you do what we say, when we say it, right?” 

The mechas nodded, as compliant as the humans - but then mechas were supposed to be nothing but compliance.

“Can we go now?” he growled into Doyle’s ear. Doyle nodded, slapped him quickly on the arm, and then led the way through the small crowd of humans to the door. Bodie pushed to the front, checked the corridor again, and ran ahead to the stairwell. All quiet. He found Doyle a final time, looking tense but calm, and then he headed up to the banquet hall, back to join the party and give Doyle time to get them away.

o0o

There were maybe thirty humans behind him, all dressed in black skintights from head to foot, but other than that as different as it was possible to be. Tall, short, slim, voluptuous - some with eyes that gleamed excitement, some who looked terrified, some who looked entirely indifferent, used to doing as they were told, to assuming that any change which didn’t leave them dead might be acceptable. A few of them tried to ask questions every time he came near, and he glowered at them, heart pounding. Didn’t the idiots know they were running for their lives, their potentially short lives?

They were on the opposite side of the flight pad to the transport docks, and there was no way to lead a straggle of thirty humans directly across to the vehicle, but they could follow the outer service corridor, hope to slip out into the light as close as they could, and get on board before they were spotted. He’d tap Bodie a call when they were ready, wait for him to bring his lot over, and they’d be off. 

It was almost worse that they didn’t seem to meet a single guard as they traversed the rig. He knew Bodie’d set the security for them all around, knew he’d be heading off anyone who looked like encroaching on their route, and he trusted him - he _did_ trust him, he realised, a kind of cool certainty washing through him - but it made the journey eerily quiet. The engines of the rig were silent, the pounding of the waves against the rig’s feet were muffled inside, he was alone with the thud of his heart and the rustling breath and footsteps of the humans behind him. 

He’d reached the final door, had flattened himself against the wall and begun to open it, when everything suddenly seemed to go wrong.

o0o

Bodie was propositioned three times before he’d managed more than a glass of champagne and a handful of canapes in the banquet hall, and found himself making dates with two of them for the sake of his cover - a tall blonde woman, whose green gaze reminded him of Doyle, and a slim man who moved lithely through the crowd, so that Bodie almost wondered if he was mecha rather than orga. He caught Krivas in a corner, managed to keep him talking and answering questions for a good fifteen minutes before releasing him to the attentions of twin women he thought he’d seen in one of the celeb houses online.

He tried to move around the room as if he was enjoying his work, as if this was all he had wanted from a job, as if he wasn’t waiting for Doyle’s call to vibrate through the hand he’d stuck in his pocket, clutching his phone. 

Those bloody mechas - if he hadn’t taken Doyle down there, if he’d left him watching the door, gone to get the humans himself… But no, that wouldn’t have worked either, not with Doyle. They were in this together, they had to be together, all the way. He realised he was staring at a redhead on the other side of the room, looked away quickly before she could catch his eye, and saw one of Krivas’s soldiers striding through the crowd, as out of place as a Christmas tree in George Cowley’s office. He garnered his fair share of looks despite that - probably because of it, a tough bit of rough, a suggestion of the real thing that this lot would be playing at later tonight. He reached Krivas, who was suddenly alert, whispered in his ear.

Krivas turned to look at Bodie.

Run, or hide? As if it was a summons, Bodie raised a cool eyebrow, tossed back the rest of his drink, and wandered over.

“Trouble?”

“Visitors from the east,” Krivas said. “They look small, and far away, but there’s something strange about the signal. Go and take a look.”

Bodie frowned. “Everyone here accounted for?”

“Oh yes,” Krivas said, watching him steadily. “You know the protocol for gatecrashers - I hope you’ve not had too many of those.” He tipped his head to the glass in Bodie’s hand, and Bodie reached out and dropped it on a passing servemecha.

“About time something happened around here,” he grinned. “Come on then - let’s go greet your friends.”

He followed the soldier back through the party, counting the customer’s as he went, checking Newbolt’s whereabouts - everyone here was where they should be. Now who the hell was coming to spoil the party? Couldn’t be Doyle in the transport, that would have read loud and clear. He quashed down the small hope in his breast, because there was no such thing as the cavalry without a requisition form, and reached for his phone, drawing it out to hold firmly.

 _Call_ , damn you.

As if summoned, his phone buzzed, and then a sudden rising wail of sirens rent the air. The soldier in front of him broke into a run, and Bodie followed, splitting away to burst into the nearest control room, to stare out the window into the floodlit flight deck, where the dark shapes of black flyers were descending like rain, vanguarding a much bigger transport as it landed, warding off all comers with laser shots. The transport had barely touched the deck before it seemed to burst open on both sides, and a storm of operatives flooded out. Bodie had just enough time to register the face of George Cowley, high up in the cockpit of the transport, and then there were footsteps behind him, and a gun at his temple, cold metal pressing hard into his skin.

“You treacherous bastard,” Krivas said.

o0o

There was a shout from outside on the flight deck, and Doyle was sure they’d been discovered, a thunder of booted feet abruptly loud, and then soldiers, two dozen of them, pouring past the gap of the door without even glancing at it, heading away from the transport, towards the bar on the other side of the deck.

It was now or never.

Doyle opened the door all the way, looked around and then gestured the group behind him. “Come on,” he said. “Fast and quiet, but _fast_.” Two of the girls were crying, one young lad almost hyperventilating, and there was no time to deal with them. “Nearly there,” he managed, hoping it was true. What the hell was going on? Some kind of rebellion? Krivas’s soldiers fed up of being on the outside looking in?

Didn’t matter, not if he could get this lot out. He took a final look around, but all the action was on the other side of the flight pad now, and sprinted for the ramp by the transport, aiming his phone in the general direction of the door controls, and hitting _enter_ as hard as he could, over and over. It began to slide open, and he stopped at the side, starting to push the kids - _they were too young for this, his head sang at him, too young for all this_ \- in the direction of the cargo seats, at the same time slamming his thumb down on the call for Bodie.

“Come on!” he roared, as the last half-dozen hesitated. He swung back onto the ramp to see what they were looking at, blinked himself as black flyers seemed to fall suddenly from the darkness onto the glare of the deck. The kids rushed past him, and he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. 

The flyers seemed to have left a huge gap between themselves, and it was being filled now by another transport - bigger than the two already on the deck - which was being guarded from all comers. Laser shots bounced from the flyers to the deck in blinding flashes of light, and Krivas’s soldiers were returning fire. 

Where the fuck was Bodie? 

“Wait here!” he shouted into the transport, and set the door to close and lock. He had a glimpse of frightened faces, of kids jumping back up from their seats, and then they were gone. 

Who the hell would be attacking the rig? There were no markings on the transport, the operatives pouring out were blackclad and unidentifiable. Any enemy of Krivas had to be his friend, but he knew from bitter experience that friends couldn’t always be trusted to watch your back. 

He paused, indecisive. If Bodie was on his way, he’d aim for the exit beside the second transport, but in all this chaos god knew what he’d run into on the way. A stray laser shot smacked into the deck in front of the transport, and he jumped. Then again, better in than out. Maybe the skin did repel laserburn, he didn't fancy testing it.

He sprinted back the way he’d come, through the still-open door and into the outer corridor, and had turned towards the bar before he stopped, took a deep breath, and then headed back into the depths of the rig instead. If the mechas were gone, he’d know Bodie had got that far - and if they weren’t gone, then they at least needed the chance to save themselves from whatever new chaos had come to claim them. 

They were still there, mostly pressed against the bars, and when they saw him they shouted, clamouring for release. 

“Get to the transport!” he shouted. “The D-class! If anyone can pilot it, then get yourselves away.” He scanned the cage open, pressed himself back against the wall as they pushed and jostled each other to get out, to get away. It was anyone’s guess whether they’d do what they’d been told. The last mecha to leave, though, slowed at the doorway, and turned back. She was a variation on Just Jane, the same tall, voluptuous shape, but hair a shining copper, pale skin, and bright blue eyes. She held out a hand to stop him going past.

“You are not one of us,” she said. “Although you look like one of us.”

Doyle shook his head, impatient to be gone. “No.”

“You are orga,” she said, and then she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, orga. Good luck.”

Doyle looked at her in surprise, watched her as she stepped away to follow her companions towards the flight deck, and then took a breath and followed her back to the corridor, turning in the opposite direction, away towards the bar. If anyone saw him he was just one of many love mechas running to save themselves, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to see anyone. He paused at each deck exit he came to, most still closed but a few wide open, scanning the rig desperately for Bodie. If he hadn’t made it this far, then…

There.

His hands clasped on his head, Bodie was being pushed and shoved along the deck by Krivas, a gun trained hard on him. Before Doyle could so much as shout out, Krivas pulled open the door of a flyer, and gestured Bodie towards it with the gun. As Bodie turned to clamber in, Krivas hit him hard across the back of his head with the butt of the gun, pushed him the rest of the way on board, and then scrambled after him and into the cockpit.

Doyle didn’t wait to see more, he looked around at the warring soldiers and black ops, took a deep breath, and made a run for the next flyer in line. Krivas launched away as he ran, and he threw himself into the vehicle, scrambling into the cockpit and desperately punching in a flight override through one of Cowley’s apps. The dashboard lights flared into life, and he throttled up hard and fast, a manual chase after the receding red flashes of Krivas’s flyer.

The rig vanished behind him, swallowed by the night, and by a fog of cloud that had gathered since their arrival, barely hours ago. He managed to lock onto Krivas’s flyer, tried to work out where he might be trying to escape to. There were parts of Scandinavia above the waterline, but at this time of year it would be madness. Back to Scotland then, and probably further. 

The miles vanished beneath them and around them and above them, one hundred, two hundred, three… Doyle settled into the pursuit, sure he’d been seen, knowing only that Krivas had to make the next move. The flyer didn’t have weapons, but in that case neither did Krivas - except for that gun. As long as he was out of range, there was nothing either of them could do but this dogged chase. Doyle took comfort in the thought that if Krivas hadn’t wanted Bodie alive, he would have shot him before they’d even left the rig.

They were approaching Colchester Drift when the comm channel suddenly whined into life.

“Whoever you are, you must want him very badly.” 

“Check your course to the nearest land coordinates,” Doyle replied, the words coming back as if he’d spoken them to some villain or other just the day before. “You’re in violation, and you need to report for correction. This is your one warning.”

“The police?” Krivas sounded surprised. “How very boring. I suppose you don’t want him very much at all, then. You know the nearest land is the Drift.”

It was his one chance to surprise the man, Doyle knew, while he was feeling cocksure of himself, while he thought Doyle was a harmless copper. He began to recite speed restrictions to distract him, took the flyer up in a sudden lift, and then used the additional push to accelerate back down again, diagonally towards the other flyer. He stopped talking, needing to concentrate, locked the course, and slid open the door of the vehicle. He’d done this once before, but it had been many years ago, he’d been just a kid - and he’d been on a horse, not a speeding flyer. If he got the timing wrong…

Doyle locked his phone snatch to the code for the door of the other flyer when they were in range, waited a second more, and then made the jump.

He landed with a thud on the roof of Krivas flyer, which dipped its course under the sudden assault, but kept going. He dropped to his stomach and grabbed at the luggage rails, held on tight in case Krivas tried to throw him. Ahead of them, his own flyer continued its course, just far enough away and fast enough to cross Krivas without hitting him. 

His timing had been good - but Krivas’s timing was better. Even as Doyle tensed to swing himself down through the open door, something dark and heavy appeared in the gap, hung for a moment, and then fell, a sudden pale blur as it tumbled face up, and then down again.

“ _Bo-die_!”

There was a vague splash over the purr of the flyer engine, as Bodie hit the water, and then Doyle was moving, even faster than he’d planned it, urgent and desperate. He saw Krivas, surprised, raise his gun, but he had his own phone out, the taser set high. Its white crackle of electricity was shockingly bright in the dim cockpit, and then Krivas was crying out and slumping against the door. Doyle stretched across him to the manual release, pulled it open, and kicked him hard out the door and into the waves breaking on Colchester Drift down below.

It took a moment for Cowley’s app to hack into the system mid-flight, and every second was a harsh heartbeat against Doyle’s chest, in his breath, a pounding against hope. He swung the flyer around, and dropped low to the waves, turning the heat-seek on and the searchlight, and peering desperately down to the sea. From up here he could see the direction of the tide, flooding towards the scraps of land that had built up to become Colchester Drift, a long thin stretch that was little more than sand and scraggy grasses.

There! A dark mound showing dim on the heat-seek, levels reading dangerously low. Doyle swooped down, landed with a clumsiness that he didn’t care about, and pushed himself outside to fall to his knees by the body.

It was Bodie.

The surf loud in his ears, Doyle turned him over, working automatically, as he’d been taught as a child, as he’d been trained over and again since then. Clear the airway, tilt the head, and breathe... and breathe... and breathe... Bodie’s skin was cold, clammy to the touch, and he couldn’t make his chest work and... 

And Doyle didn’t want him to die.

He thought of hotels across the city, of Bodie naked against him, and laughing, and of making him laugh. It wasn’t right that Bodie’s lips were so still beneath his, that they didn’t tease and provoke and kiss him in this darkness... _Compression to the chest, and breathe, and breathe..._ The wind whipped around them, salted and hard. _Come on, Bodie!_

Cowley and CI-bloody-5. Where were his dreams now, eh? Good lives laid down after bad, and pain and punishment and... _and breathe... and breathe... and breathe..._ He’d joined the force to make a difference, and George Cowley made an even bigger difference so he’d wanted CI5, but _Bodie couldn’t die_.

Breathe.

And then Bodie did. Doyle felt the air taken away from him, was too cold, too surprised to move away fast enough, so that Bodie coughed it back into him, convulsed under his hands, turned his head and retched seawater over them both, spluttering and gasping desperately, and trying to sit up, so that Doyle reached his arms around him to support him, and then to hold him as he shuddered to quietness again, breathing more solidly, breathing evenly.

Bodie was alive.

He took a shaking breath, turned his face into Bodie’s neck, and kissed him just there, on the cold of his skin, the cold _life_ of his skin.

“You stupid...” he began, pulling away so that he could see that Bodie really was alright, and had to stop to catch his breath again. “That how they teach you to blow your cover in the army, is it?”

Bodie looked dazed, surprised maybe, to be still alive. He leaned up to take his own weight, then shook his head, sending flicks of salt water into Doyle’s face, and stared at him. “You look terrible,” he said. He looked around. “Where the hell’s Krivas?”

o0o

Cowley’s office was high up in the building, and the sun could be seen rising in the east, over the old town, over the waters and somewhere, further away, over the ocean. The sky was a wash of blue, pale but fresh, promising a cold but clear day ahead.

Bodie and Doyle stood side by side in front of Cowley’s desk, as he looked down at hard copies of their reports, turning a page now and then, occasionally frowning, once with a twist of a smile on his face. Finally, just as Doyle was about to crack, he looked up.

“Well then, you didn’t do a bad job, either of you.” He watched them exchange glances.

“No, sir.” That was Bodie, of course.

“If you look in that cabinet by the wall, Doyle, you’ll find a bottle and glasses. I think we could all do with a wee dram.”

Doyle turned his head, slightly puzzled, but he moved obediently to the cabinet, found the whisky and poured three measures. Three large measures, Cowley noted.

“Without Krivas to testify, the responsibility - and the complicity - falls entirely on Newbolt,” he said. “Krivas’s death was unfortunate.”

“It broke up the syndicate,” Bodie protested. “There’s no one will take that over from him.”

“No one else has the sheer brass,” Cowley agreed. “And Newbolt and Johnson will be locked into correction for a very long time. As I said, you’ve not done badly.”

“No sign of the mechas, I suppose?”

“No Doyle, no sign. But there’s been no death-signal reported from the transport either, which suggests it was powered down on purpose. You’ve left work there for the mecha recovery unit.”

“Yes, sir.”

 _Yes, sir_ his old grandmother. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to tell them to stay put?”

“I didn’t know what was going on!” Another protest. “For all I knew it was the fourth war starting out there. Not fair to just leave them.”

“No.” He glared at them disapprovingly, but all in all, they - well, they hadn’t done badly.

“I’ve put an advice on the system to your former employers,” he said, watching with interest for their reactions. They wouldn’t object, he knew, not either of them, but as it had throughout the case, it was the human factor that interested him most. “You’ve been seconded for employment within CI5. The code-numbers from this operation will remain yours, as will your access to the security applications and equipment. You will work together as the 3-7/4-5 unit henceforth.”

“Permanently?” Bodie asked, one eyebrow raised, and there it was again, the exchange of looks between them. Aye, he’d done well here.

“For as long as I say so, Bodie!” He stared up at them still. “Well? Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir!”

“No, sir.” That was Doyle - maybe a wee bit reluctant, but he could see the spark of interest there, aye, even eagerness.

“Well then - return the Skin to Patricks upstairs before you go, Doyle, along with your field test report, and then you’d better both have the rest of the day off - I’d suggest you use it to organise your affairs. You will be moved into CI5 secure accommodation sometime this week.”

“Er… yes, sir.”

“Then I will see you at seven tomorrow morning.”

“Seven... ouch!” Doyle flashed a frown in Bodie’s direction, but Bodie smiled innocently back at him, then took hold of his sleeve and pulled him towards the door, away, Cowley suspected, not only from this office, and CI5, but from the rest of the outside world, for at least a few hours. Yes, very interesting.

“Seven o’clock!” Bodie said, one hand raised in cheery farewell, the other settling palm down somewhere on Doyle’s lower back. “Running all the way, sir!”


End file.
